Sundogs & Shadowplay
by Kiana Caelum
Summary: Celia Slone grew up knowing the Nightworld. Her friends are vampires and witches, shapeshifters and prophets. When a mysterious organisation starts hunting them, she finds herself caught in the middle of a war between human and inhuman...
1. Chapter 1

Well, this little corner of FFN is a lot quieter than last time I was here. Lyrics by Tom McRae. Sequel to Ripples, but you don't need to have read it.

**Sundogs and Shadowplay**

I

_Suddenly, suddenly you were warned__  
Shooting stars in flight from the dawn  
I'm the breath on your face  
You think you are safe…  
I am watching you_

The first day back at school was always strange. Celia was prepared for that.

But nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to find in her locker. Her hands were busy fiddling with the rusty combination lock. Her attention, however, was on Finlay Farrier as he gesticulated wildly, his dark blue eyes alight.

"...swear it was a banshee, an honest-to-god screeching banshee, right there on the roof!"

"Banshees exist?" she said.

Every time Celia thought she understood the Nightworld, something else popped up to surprise her. She wasn't supposed to know about it at all, technically, but Ryars Valley wasn't known for its law-abiding supernatural citizens. It was a refuge of sorts, a bolthole for the rebellious, foolish or downright unlucky.

"Not only do they exist, it turns out that they're partial to terracotta tiling. Holds the heat better, apparently."

"So what happened? I can't imagine your dad took it too well."

The witch gave her a wry look. Mr Farrier was notoriously hysterical about the unfortunate things which occurred when teenagers invaded his house. Add in the fact she was only human in their circle of friends and suddenly his panicky eyes and need to mainline camomile tea were explained. "No. He screamed something about the guttering and started throwing apples at it."

"Come off it!"

"That's what he said." Over her groan, he carried on. "Of course, the banshee just screamed even louder and all the apples exploded in mid-air. Me and Dad were covered in pulp, and he was starting to look a bit embarrassed, until he noticed its scream had also deadheaded every last one of his begonias."

Celia winced. Finn's dad was very attached to his flowers. "Not good."

"No. And then he _screams_-"

Her locker swung open with the usual tortured creak.

"-what the hell is that?" yelped Finn. It took her a moment to realise it wasn't part of his story.

She followed his aghast stare and a frisson of unease ran through her. Someone had sprayed graffiti inside her locker in sloppy yellow letters.

_Vamp tramp._

As first day pranks went, it was pretty mild. "Fashion critique, I guess," she said, touching it to find the paint dry. "I knew those fishnets last semester were a bad idea."

"That's not what it means." Finn was tight-lipped, taut as a hound on point. He reached past to slam the locker shut. She flinched at the noise, discord to the chatter and laughter around them.

"Explain then."

"Later. When there's less people about."

The sharp scent of ozone rode the air, a sure sign that Finn was angry. The witch had a fiery temper, and that was more than mere metaphor. She eyed his ginger hair. No smoke. Good: there was nothing like trying to hustle a raging bundle of magical hormones outside before his hair combusted.

"Finn, are you okay?" she said tentatively.

"Like I said, later." He gave her a tight, grim smile. "I'm trying not to go all Human Torch on-"

"Oh my god!"

The shriek split the air like lightning. Everyone turned to look, conversations dying away.

Across the hall, Grace Thelasso was hugging herself, stood in a clutter of books that she'd clearly dropped. And on the inside of her locker door was more graffiti, yellow and lurid.

_Catch of the day._

But that, Celia suspected, wasn't what had made her scream.

No, the very dead, very rotten fish dripping out of her locker had probably done it.

Celia's stomach turned. Grace was a dolphin shapeshifter. And that...that was one sick message.

Grace was gasping like she was caught between tears and screams, her face yoghurt-white against her dark hair, and no one seemed to want to go near her. As the smell hit, Celia could see why: it had clearly been stewing in there for some time.

"Finn..." she said, trying not to breathe too deeply.

"Yeah, I see it," he murmured.

Grace stared into her locker, shivering. Then her legs crumpled and she hit the floor with an almighty thud. Chaos erupted – people rushed to her, a throng of waving hands and overlapping voices while Grace lay as still and pale as a slaughtered swan in the middle of it all.

"Do you know first aid? Should we put her in the recovery position?"

"-is _disgusting_, what is _wrong_ with people?"

"-like that. And check her airway – that's what they do on _House_…"

"-reeks. Eugh, at least she didn't leave anything in there."

The bell for first period shrilled. Around them, the hallway started to empty out. Even with first day dramas, no one wanted to be tardy this soon.

Finn nudged her, voice muted. "Did they leave anything in your locker?"

God, she hoped not. Visions of dead bugs from a hundred B-movies flashed before her. A quick glance showed nothing out of the ordinary, but she poked through her books to be sure. "Just paint. Guess I was lucky."

Finn caught her arm. His eyes were dark blue slits, his fingers hot as if he'd been baking under the sun for hours. As he hustled her away, he sounded grim. "Maybe. But whoever it is, they know about the Nightworld."

She heard what he didn't say, what made his grip a little too hard, his steps a little too fast.

Not just the Nightworld: us.

-X-

Celia drifted through her classes in a daze, ears pricked for gossip. Everyone was talking about Grace, if not with any great accuracy. Rumour said she was pregnant, she had life-threatening meningitis, her boyfriend had ditched her, a storm of half-truths and outright lies told behind cupped hands.

By the time lunch rolled around, she was desperate for answers.

"You," she said, collaring Finn as he clumped out of history class. "Outside, now."

The hill at the edge of campus belonged unofficially to their circle of friends. So it was no great surprise to see Delphine Thetis already there, her long red hair in a plait, picking at a limp salad.

"Phi!" Finn brightened, hauling her up into a huge, theatrical hug. "How are you?"

There was more to that question than social mores. Phi's grey eyes were soft and a little sad as she settled back down. "Okay. Getting used to it. It's still weird without Mom." She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "And it's even weirder being human."

He rocked a hand. "Could be worse. If you were still mer, it might be you finding dead fish in your locker."

Phi frowned. "It's true then? No one in the pod would talk to me."

Before summer, Phi had been a dolphin shapeshifter, just like Grace Thelasso. She'd been their golden girl, and her father had been their leader.

But when her parents had arranged a marriage for her, the only way she could escape it was to give up her powers. That, it turned out, wasn't enough for her former fiancée. Far from being an ideal husband, he was in fact a power-hungry maniac who'd enlisted a dragon and the local werewolf pack to help him wrest control from Phi's dad.

In the ensuing struggle, it had all gotten incredibly messy. Some nights, Celia still woke up gasping for air, surfacing from nightmares of a cave where her friends lay dying, from a forest where she had been tortured. If it all seemed unreal, she had only to look at her little finger which had never healed entirely straight after the wolves broke it.

"Still?" Finn snorted. "They're idiots. It's true. And she's not the only one."

"Who else?" said Phi, looking intrigued.

Celia raised her hand.

"Really?"

"Really," she confirmed. "Just graffiti in mine." Then she prodded Finn in the leg. "And you're going to tell me exactly what it means and why you got all crabby."

"You too, darling?" A shadow fell over her, cast by a girl as effortlessly styled as a model. All long brown legs and lime-green eyes, Joana Katter looked every inch the wildcat she became. "That makes three then."

"Who's the other one?" she asked. "Me, Grace..."

"Nessa Arlin." Celia knew her by sight: a bubbly blond cheerleader who happened to be a witch.

"What did they leave her?" said Finn, an edge to his voice.

"_Suffer not a witch_," answered Jo, distaste curling her mouth. "There was a burnt bit of meat in her locker too."

Some joke this was. "I think it's time you told me what mine meant," Celia said to Finn. "Why were you so mad?"

"Wait, what did yours say?" Jo asked.

"_Vamp tramp_. Whatever that means."

Phi's eyes flashed to her, wide. Jo's fingers flexed as if she wished she had claws.

"Tell her," instructed Phi.

Heaving a sigh, Finn lay back on the grass. His face was thoughtful as he gazed up at the sky. "It's a Nightworld term, sort of, from the enclaves. It's what they call the volunteers. The ones who let the vampires do what they want."

"You mean feed?" He shook his head, and Celia got it. "You mean _whatever _they want."

"Yeah. You get fed from too often, your hormones get screwed up. It gets addictive. Eventually you can't tell the difference between pleasure and pain, which suits the vampires just fine. My aunt..." His eyes were half-closed, his voice deceptively tranquil. "She got caught up. My dad tried to get her out, and he pissed off a lot of important people doing it. That's why he and Mom moved here."

"What happened to your aunt?"

"She died. I didn't even know about her until last year." He cracked a rueful grin. "You remember I went on a date with Lily Michelmas? Yeah. Dad gave me a big pep talk about the dangers of dating a vampire. Told me all about Aunt Gwen, blissed out while they peeled off her skin. I told him there hadn't even been any tongue, never mind teeth and lifelong addiction, but no, no, he had to leave me with that mental picture before I went out with one of the only girls who can see past the hair."

Celia laughed, and it helped a little. "Finn, it's not the hair. It's the fact you flirt with anything that breathes."

"Not _anything_," he said indignantly. "Only _pretty _things."

"Speaking of pretty things," said Jo, "Someone obviously knows about Riose. And they think he's feeding on Cee."

Celia sputtered.

"Of course I'm not," said a cool voice, and Celia looked up as the object of their conversation arrived.

Riose Orage came from an old and respectable vampire family. At first glance, he was lean as a sword, an unsmiling, unobtrusive boy with dark hair, but that was all part of his camouflage. He moved with a panther's silky grace, and those narrow turquoise eyes took in everything and gave away almost nothing. Unless, of course, you happened to know him well enough to see past the diffident act.

"We know you're not," said Jo with her usual impatience. "But our little doodlebugs think differently."

His attention swung to Celia. "The graffiti guys? Did they leave you a message?"

"They tagged my locker," she said cautiously.

His mouth drew tight. Riose's voice was very calm as he said, "With what?"

"_Vamp tramp_."

Silver spiked through his eyes like lightning. Jo flinched and touched her temples as if she had a headache. Finn was looking similarly pained, which meant Riose's anger was leaking out into the air like carbon monoxide. At times like this, Celia was glad she was human and as supernaturally sensitive as a polystyrene cup.

"It's probably a joke," she suggested, though she couldn't even convince herself of that.

"Hilarious," snapped Riose. "Nothing gets them rolling in the aisles like death threats."

"It's sick, but it's just words," said Jo. She shrugged at Riose's incensed look. "Not saying I agree, Ri. Remember when Will Ratner set the fire alarms off in the middle of winter? That wasn't fun either, but it was harmless."

"I don't like it," the vampire said, but some of the tension left his body.

"Well, neither do I," said Celia. "And if it happens again, then we'll worry. But I want to grill Phi about her sexy reborn soulmate-"

Finn let out an enormous groan. "He's too old!"

"He's only been alive for a month," said Phi somewhat shyly.

"This time round!" objected Finn. "Before that he was twenty thousand years older than you. That's not an age gap, Phi, that's an age Grand Canyon. And he's a phoenix. He's completely ruined my monopoly on spontaneous combustion."

Celia giggled at his outraged expression, and in the wave of protestations and confidences and laughter that followed, she almost forgot the slur defacing her locker and all that it might mean.

-X-

"Well, we survived," announced Finn as he caught up with Celia by the gates. "Day one of junior year is over."

"Hey, Farrier!" A long-legged black boy loped up to them. "When's the party?"

Finn gave him that weird upright hand clasp that seemed to be some kind of male bonding thing. Celia had tried it with Finn once and he'd looked at her in much the same way as she imagined Victorian maiden aunts looked at debutantes when they used the salad fork for the fish course. "Hey Arch, how was summer?"

"Not bad, not bad." Arch wrinkled his nose, looking very much like the hare he shapeshifted into. "So c'mon, where and when?"

Finn was the oldest in their year, and his birthday almost always fell in the first week of the semester. Consequently, it had become something of an event. In the last two years, there had been more break-ups, make-ups and shake-ups than the average soap opera season.

"Friday. You free?"

"For one of your parties? I'm always free. Usual place?"

"Yup. Out in the barn. The parents are taking off for the weekend. Any chance you can bring over a couple of speakers?"

Arch grinned. It was easy to see where his nickname had come from: he'd started life as Evander Gabriel, but had become Archangel ten minutes into freshman year after someone made the obvious joke. Even if he didn't behave like one, when he smiled, he looked the part. "Maybe. Any chance you can give them back in one piece this year?"

"Hey, I didn't knock them over," said Finn, and in tandem, they looked at her. Figured.

"Jo was the one who danced on them!" she protested, hands held up to declaim her innocence.

"Yeah, but I seem to remember _someone_ assuring me that they were designed to take her weight," said Finn.

"Yep, that rings a bell," agreed Arch, eyes twinkling. "And if Riose hadn't held you back, I'm pretty sure you'd have been up there defying the laws of physics."

"You were holding Nessa back," she pointed out.

Arch's amusement faded into a frown. "Yeah. You know, she thought that graffiti crap in her locker today was me? I mean, I was kind of a jerk, and the break-up was messy, but..."

"Any idea who it was?" she said lightly.

He shrugged, a line between his brows. "Not me. Like I told Ness." He hefted his bag over his shoulder with a faint look of alarm. "Speak of the devil woman..."

With a turn of speed that explained why he was a track star, Arch shot out of the gates as Nessa walked down the stairs with a gaggle of friends. From the daggers the cheerleader glared at his back, she wasn't convinced of his innocence.

As she passed them, her glower melted into a smile full of sunshine. "Yours Friday?" she called to Finn.

He tipped her a wink. "You can be mine any day of the week, Ness."

"Arch'll kill you if he finds out," Celia muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

"I'll be discreet," said he for whom discretion was merely a winning word in Scrabble. He slung a friendly arm around her. "Whereas you, my gorgeous tramp, are clearly not."

"That's vamp tramp to you, Farrier." She grinned at him. "Hey, what do they call a witch's servants?"

He paused, looking pensive. Then he said, "Well, I call mine Phi and Celia..."

The elbow in his ribs, she considered, was entirely deserved.

-X-

Celia took the same route home she always did, through the centre of town. And everything felt normal again – the words in her locker were shut away, half-forgotten. The sun beat down on her, heat soaking into her skin like oil in a warm bath, while hard glints of light danced from glass and metal.

And then she saw a bright flash at the corner of her eye that didn't vanish as she moved, tucked down an alleyway.

That shade of yellow was eerily familiar.

She hesitated, then turned down the alleyway. And it was revealed. Huge straggling letters covered the brick wall. That in itself wasn't odd: every town had graffiti and Ryars Valley was no exception. But the words sent a chill crawling down her spine.

_There will be a reckoning. _

There was something else, too, at the end of it. Two concentric circles overlaid by an inverted V. It seemed deliberate, but it meant nothing to her. She drifted closer, hardly aware of anything else. Tentative, Celia brushed the paint with her fingertips. Dry.

A reckoning...

Someone touched her arm and she screeched, turning on them with flailing hands.

Her frankly pathetic attack was neutralized in seconds by a firm grip around her wrists. She met turquoise eyes, familiar and just a touch amused.

"Only me," Riose said. "Can I let go, or are you going to flap at me again?"

She scowled. "I wasn't flapping."

"You were." His thumb was brushing the inside of her wrist in a soft, absent motion that she couldn't seem to ignore. "Some self-defence that was. Your mom would be outraged."

As it always did, the memory of her mother demonstrating judo moves on Riose and Finn brought a smile to her lips. "I was distracted."

"I can see why," he remarked, his attention flicking to the wall. He let go of her, but not before she felt a momentary tightness in his grip. "They've been busy, haven't they?"

"Whoever they are," she said.

His jaw was set. There was something less than human in his eyes as he regarded that lurid threat, something of a predator's pitiless regard. "I have the feeling we'll find out soon enough."

She made a face. "I hope not."

He didn't look at her, but there was something low and fierce in his voice as he said, "If they come near you, they'll have me to deal with."

"I can deal with them myself, thank you," she retorted. "You might have snuck up on me like a ninja-"

"I called your name. Twice."

"-like a ninja who talks very quietly," she amended with a frosty stare.

"I shouted, actually."

With a huff, Celia carried on. "-but if the Spray Team come anywhere near me, I'll do exactly what Mom taught me to do."

Riose looked sceptical.

"Give them the Slone knee and run like hell," she clarified.

The corner of his mouth crooked up. "That sounds like your mom. I guess I should be glad she didn't demonstrate that move on me."

"Nah." Celia linked an arm through his and began to steer him back to the main street. "She likes you."

"No, she doesn't. And stop trying to distract me. This isn't just someone messing around in school now, Cee. This is something bigger."

"It's graffiti," she said. "It's some idiot with an aerosol and too much time."

"Maybe you're right. Or maybe they're saying what others want to. There's a reason we keep what we are secret. When humans find out we exist, it goes one of three ways. They hate us or they fear us or they envy us."

His certainty hurt. She stopped, dropping his arm, and he turned to gaze at her, quizzical, as if he couldn't see that his words had separated them like the bars of a jail. Him is his world, dark and wild, her in hers.

"And which one am I?" she said.

The silence bristled like a thicket full of nettles.

His face became expressionless, but she had seen that stillness in him before. It was practiced, his instinct when he was threatened or unsure, assessing the danger like a trained professional.

And that...well, that wasn't so far from the truth.

Riose had been an assassin once.

Celia supposed that she should have been afraid of him, knowing what he had been and what he still was. She had seen the monster peering through his eyes, a cold merciless thing that wore human form like clothing.

But they'd grown up together. And she could pretend that she'd never suspected anything, but it wouldn't be entirely true. The clues had been there.

Even when they were kids, he'd never cried over scraped knees or bruises. He'd never talked about his summers, never sent postcards, but he came back with new scars and exhaustion in every step. And once, when they were eight or nine, playing games and laughing over dumb jokes, he'd looked at her with wistful, wondering eyes, like she was a tiger in a zoo, a creature from a world he didn't really understand.

Like he was looking at her right now, the mask slipping away to leave her friend stood there.

"The exception," Riose said, and how could she ever fear him?

"Right answer," she said firmly, hiding the relief that swamped her. Celia looped her arm through his and it was easier to look at those sinister yellow words then, as if he anchored her. "Know what you win?"

That wrung a small smile from him. "Go on."

"A once-in-a-lifetime chance to help me decide what to get Finn for his birthday."

Riose gave her a look but let her steer him out of the alleyway. "Pretty sure that's a once-in-a-year chance."

"He's eyeing up Nessa Arlin. You think he'll make it to eighteen if Arch finds out?"

"Good point. Lead the way, then."

And as they left the alley behind, the threat seemed as overblown as a pantomime villain. Still, a tiny part of her recognised that to those hostile eyes, hidden in the shadows, she seemed exactly what they thought. A vampire's plaything, on his arm like a favourite pet.

But even if it was real, what could they do? After all, she knew better than anyone else: they were only human.

_I'm the voice that you hear  
When no one is near  
I am watching you  
'Cause you're in the line  
Line of fire_

-X-


	2. Chapter 2

Evening all! Many thanks to the very lovely people who reviewed the last part; and voila, a second. Thank you: Izzy (Thank you! Are you the same Izzy from so many years ago?), sardonic squids,Elentiriel, goblinishelves, Anterrabae, bunnies ate my baby, and the lovely slstmaraudersjple.

Lyrics are from _Trouble is a Friend_ by Lenka from the Easy A soundtrack.

**Sundogs and Shadowplay**

II

_Trouble, he will find you, no matter where you go  
__No matter if you're fast, no matter if you're slow  
__The eye of the storm or the cry in the morn  
__You're fine for a while but you start to lose control…_

Like the Queen and other notable luminaries, Finn had an official and an unofficial birthday. The official one would happen on Friday, and was loosely controlled carnage.

Only a select few were invited to the unofficial birthday, and nearly all of them were there as Celia shouldered open the creaky garden gate, balancing a potato salad in one hand and a large carrot cake in the other.

"What time d'you call this?" shouted Finn from where he and Riose were wrestling with a gazebo. From the harassed look on Ri's face, it wasn't going well.

She held up the platter, flinging him a smile as sweet as the butter icing. "Time you had cake?"

"Not yet. I'm going to get this thing up if it kills me," declared the witch.

"It probably will," murmured Jo from where she was painting her toenails on the grass. A pair of huge sunglasses hid her eyes, but not her smile. "This is attempt number four."

There was a sky-rattling clatter as the entire structure folded like a house of cards onto Finn. Furious swearing followed, only partially muffled by the canvas.

"Five," corrected Phi as she dropped the fairylights she was untangling to help Riose fish out a sputtering Finn.

Mrs Farrier glanced over from the barbecue, entirely unconcerned by the plight of her firstborn. "Finlay, while your father and I remain astounded by your vocabulary, I don't think _anyone_ can do that with a pogo stick, even if they are the messiah."

Finn kicked at the canvas. "This thing is cursed!"

Daniel Thetis ambled over, looking older and greyer than last time Celia had seen him. Phi's father picked up the instruction booklet and flicked through it for a few moments. "It might help if you had the poles the right way up, son."

Finn stared at him, then said, "Oh."

Mr Thetis gave him a little smile. "Always read the manual. It's a good rule for life."

"Except for the things that don't have manuals," said a dry voice that was unmistakable. Celia turned to see her mother stride through the gate, bottle of wine tucked under her arm, still in her suit. "Which is all the important stuff, unfortunately. Sorry I'm late. Who are the new neighbours?"

Mrs Farrier perked up. "We have new neighbours?"

"Mmm. The van's across the road and they have the most beautiful sportscar."

Celia and Phi swapped looks. "We'll investigate," announced Celia.

"Try to be subtle," her mother advised. Then she gave her quick smile. "But we want the details."

-o0o-

It certainly was a shiny car, but Celia wasn't convinced there was anything beautiful about the slanting red metal and tinted glass. If anything, it looked vaguely demonic.

She and Phi sat on the porch, digging through a plate of cake. "I didn't think your dad was going to come tonight," Celia said softly.

"Neither did he, but your mom rang up and coaxed him into it."

"Nagged him into it, you mean." She loved her mother fiercely, but there was no denying that Jodie Slone was a force to be reckoned with. "At least Finn made him smile."

Phi's mouth curved, an echo of her father. "Yeah. First time in ages. Guess he's good for something after all."

A man got out of the sportscar. He had dark hair and a certain sleek way of moving that Celia recognised. "He must be Nightworld."

"Vampire or shapeshifter?" Phi squinted. "Vampire, I think. They haven't got much stuff."

"Weird." A few bits of furniture, a couple of boxes. The man was opening the passenger door, and a woman eased herself out. When she swayed, the man looped an arm around her, but she jolted away and he stepped back, hands up as if she were a wild animal ready to tear at him. "And so's that."

"Yeah. She seems kind of...tense."

"Because she is," said Riose, coming to join them. Celia shunted up to make room. "That's Aurenna Ravija. And he's Kurt Schrader."

"Is that supposed to mean something?" she asked. Riose didn't look on edge, hands linked between his knees, but his eyes were following the couple's every move.

"They're both Nightfire. And they don't get on."

"Nightfire as in..." said Phi, an edge to her voice.

"As in assassins, yeah." He sounded a touch puzzled, almost nonchalant as he chattered about death for hire as if it were an everyday occurrence. Which, she supposed, it had been for him. "I don't know what they're doing together, or why they're here."

The woman was at the front door, turning and waving a hand. Then the back door on the roadster burst open and a girl swung out in one sinuous move.

She was petite and slender, silky black hair rippling around her. From here, it was quite obvious that she was drop-dead gorgeous, even with the scowl she wore. She, Celia thought, was going to throw a hell of a curveball into the high school hierarchy when she started.

"Who's _that_?" said Finn from behind them.

"Whoever she is, she's got two assassins as chaperones," Celia warned the witch.

"So she really is to die for?" Finn said to a chorus of groans. "I'm just saying what we're all thinking. Well. What me and Ri are thinking."

"Actually I was thinking that whoever she is, she's carrying," said Riose.

She wasn't sure what was more unnerving: that the girl had a gun on her, or that Ri had spotted it from this distance.

"That's kind of hot," murmured Finn.

"You need help," Phi informed him. "She's the dangerous type."

"And therefore my type," the witch said. "Now we just need to find out if I'm hers."

"Ginger teenage pyros is a pretty niche category, Finn," Celia cautioned.

He grinned. "Yeah, but there's someone for everyone. She might just be my someone."

"Why don't we find out?" she said a touch mischievously, and bounced to her feet. "How about I invite her to the party?"

The girl spotted her first. She didn't move from where she leant against the passenger door, ankles crossed, the adults a flurry of activity around her. Her expression was one of absolute disinterest; Celia suspected that took a lot of practice in front of a mirror.

Unperturbed, Celia beamed at her. "Hi! I see you guys are moving in and thought I'd be the first of your many, many nosy neighbours to introduce myself. Also, I have cake."

The girl raised an eyebrow. "What kind of cake?"

"Carrot and orange. I'm Celia, by the way. Celia Slone."

The silence lingered so long it was past awkward and fast becoming bizarre before the girl said curtly, "Sunita Halaria. Everyone calls me Sunny."

"That's..." Don't say ironic, don't say ironic. "Nice."

"Making friends already, sunshine?" remarked the man. He had a stern cast to his face made more severe by the way he towered over them both. "I'm Kurt, Sunny's father."

"Adopted father," corrected Sunny, but there was no bite on the words; in fact, they drew a soft smile from the man, as if she'd complimented him. "This is Celia. She's the scout."

Kurt nodded thoughtfully. "That implies there's cavalry waiting. Let me guess – those are your friends on the porch over the road?"

"Yeah. Birthday barbecue. You guys could come over for a drink and an interrogation, if you want?"

He arched an eyebrow. "You're very frank."

Celia grinned. "Everyone thinks that, then they meet my mom and realise I'm the tactful one. She thinks your car's amazing, by the way."

He patted the hood. "That's because it is. Thanks for the offer. We won't take you up on it today, but if it's still open later, I'll pretend I'm interesting while you shine lights in my eyes. And maybe you could keep an eye on Sunny when she starts school tomorrow-"

"I can find my own friends!" snapped Sunny.

Kurt gave her a very long look. "Really."

A dark flush rose on her cheekbones. She turned a sour face to Celia and said, "I'll take the cake. I can tell I'm going to need it." She huffed a sigh. "And...I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

Celia had a brief internal struggle, then she glanced back at her friends and saw Finn's hopeful expression. "My friend's having a party on a Friday. Why don't you come to that? It's kind of an event now. Half the school will be there. You can come to mine and we'll go together."

Sunny looked taken aback, as if no one had ever asked her to a party before. "Um. Okay. Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet. Finn's parties are-" Celia caught Kurt's raised eyebrows. "-completely dull. Nothing happens. There's definitely zero chance of something exploding."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Let me guess. You all sit around and talk. Quietly. About philosophy, and the meaning of life."

"You got it," she said brightly.

His eyes danced. He reminded her a bit of Finn's mother when she was about to suggest something outrageous. "Then far be it from me to keep Sunny from the cream of society."

"I can go?" Sunny said suspiciously.

"You can go. Just remember to lie convincingly about all the things you haven't done. And definitely don't tell Renna."

"Don't tell me what?" came a new, cool voice. The woman that Riose had called Aurenna joined them, but Celia noticed she walked the extra couple of steps to put Sunny between herself and Kurt. And from the sudden tautness of his face, that mattered to him. "Oh, meeting the neighbours?"

"Celia, this is Aurenna Ravija," said Kurt. "Sunny's adopted mother."

As if they were mere acquaintances. How on earth did they end up as Sunny's parents when they couldn't even stand next to each other?

"Have you lived here long?" asked Aurenna, and Celia gladly jumped onto the small talk, filling the air with meaningless chatter as Kurt melted back to unpacking, and Sunny watched him go with a frown. Then, promising she'd meet Sunny tomorrow to help her run the gauntlet of being the new girl, Celia left them.

As she climbed back onto the porch, Finn demanded, "Well?"

"Happy birthday, Farrier," she told him. "Just don't be too surprised if she doesn't jump naked out of a cake."

-o0o-

The night was bright and clear, sequined with a multitude of stars. Celia gazed up at it from the oversized garden sofa, one shoe dangling lazily from her foot. Their parents were getting louder by the minute, mostly due to Mr Farrier cracking open his fabled wine cellar. Finn and Jo were in the middle of a tense game of jenga, and Phi was refereeing with the diligence of a UN observer in a warzone.

"Any room on there?"

She glanced over. "Depends. Is that Mrs Farrier's Death by Diabetic Coma punch?"

Riose raised the glass, which was the glorious red of unnatural additives. "What else?"

"Then there's room." She slithered over and felt his weight sink into the ancient cushions, plush as marshmallows. "You've been quiet all evening."

"I'm worried." He sighed. "I keep telling myself I shouldn't be – that the graffiti doesn't matter, but..."

"But?"

"Grace has never hidden what she is. And you – me – I mean, when that whole business was going on with Phi, none of us were too cautious. But Nessa? Nessa's practically human. She wants to be."

"Does she?" she said, startled.

He cut a quick sideways glance at her. "Some bad things happened to her parents. That's why she's living with her aunt and uncle. She's never used her magic."

"Maybe she was careless. It only has to be once."

"No. She's never used it. Not even once. Witches that use magic, they have a feel." His hands sketched vague shapes. "I'd never met one that didn't use their powers until Ness. It took me months to figure it out."

She felt her stomach squirm, the first stirrings of unease. "So how did they know about her?"

"That's the question."

He didn't have an answer. His tone said he didn't like it one bit. Neither did she.

Celia took a sip of the punch, all warmth and sugar with a little kick of heat. The jenga tower clattered down to Finn's victorious whoop and she said, "He's going to be insufferable now."

He accepted the change of subject. "We could challenge him to another game. You know – nip it in the bud."

"It's for the good of society," she agreed solemnly.

Riose stood and then pulled her out of the couch's embrace. She staggered, and he was there, hand overlapping hers to save her drink, the other on her waist, as if they were suddenly partners in some wild dance. In the twilight, his eyes were dark and unfathomable, echoes of the sea.

She was aware of every beat of her heart, thunder in her blood.

"Good catch!" hollered her mother, and Ri let go with a half-smile, his grasp slipping away as if it was nothing.

Of course it was nothing. What else would it be?

-o0o-

Midnight was sweeping in like black velvet unrolling as she and Phi left. Her mother had ordered her home with a cry of "school tomorrow!", which might have had more impact if she hadn't accidentally hurled half a glass of wine onto the lawn at the same time.

"Aren't we supposed to be the ones getting smashed and staying up late?" she grumbled.

Phi shrugged. "Hang on for Friday. Finn was muttering about flaming sambucas and fireworks."

Oh god. "Tell me he's not lighting them, because I can think of at least ten ways that can go horribly wrong."

"I could, but it would be an enormous lie."

"Guess I'll have to find a strapping man to nobly throw himself on top of me if it all goes bang then." She nudged Phi. "Any suggestions?"

"How about Mike Stanislov? He's pretty strapping. And he keeps trying to talk to you after class."

"Yeah, and if he was anymore into himself, he'd implode. When Finn's fireworks go wrong, which one of us do you think he'd expect to be the human shield?"

Phi's grin flickered in the gloom. "You. Okay. What about Will Ratner, then? There's no way he needs your help as much as he keeps pretending in labs."

She couldn't hide a small smile. "Yeah, I'd noticed. And he's cute."

"Kind of serious though."

"Serious is good. Serious is what you need in an emergency, and there's no way having Finn light a bunch of incendiary devices isn't going to be an emergency."

"So you're saying Will Ratner is the guy to call on in a zombie apocalypse?"

Celia snorted. "No chance! Riose is my go-to guy for zombies, wars, invasions and other foul play. But we both know Riose is going to be stood right next to Finn when he starts getting all sparky, probably losing his eyebrows again."

"Bros before brows," Phi said, and that sent them both into fits of laughter. Everything felt normal again: simple, safe, right.

Then they rounded the corner, and just like that, her certainty was gone.

Blue lights revolved on the police car pulled up to the kerb. Onlookers were clumped in doorways and beside their fences, all looking as wary as she felt because crime happened to other people in other places. Not here.

Celia felt a funny little lurch in her heart as she took in the details: a broken window, shiny shards clinging like teeth to the frame, and words sprayed on the door in what had to be yellow paint.

_Open season._

But worse...there was something – something covered with a towel, humped on the porch. Dark stains had leached through the material, and suddenly the silly tag on her locker didn't feel like a joke anymore.

"Not again," said Phi beside her. "Whose house is it?"

"Mine," said a flat, sad voice, and Celia was so unused to hearing Arch defeated that she didn't recognise him until he stood up from where he was sunk on the sidewalk. "They put a brick through the window. My mom's in bits."

"Are you okay?" she said. "Can we...can we do anything?"

It felt like a stupid question. Nothing they could do would take away the words or the broken glass or the sudden realisation that in an instant your life could derail and leave you sat on a sidewalk in the vast shadow of faceless, nameless malice.

"Thanks. But no." His eyes were fixed on the floor, jaw clenched. "Maybe Ness will believe it wasn't me now. Some silver lining."

"What do they want?" she said, feeling like she should be angry instead of small and afraid. Her skin was as clammy as if she'd been lying on damp sheets.

"To spread their gospel, I guess," said Arch bitterly. "Whatever the hell it is. Grace got a dead fish. They went one up with me."

She didn't want to know: she needed to. "What did they do?"

"Dead rabbit." His voice was a monotone. "Skinned. Sick bastards."

"No. Oh god. I'm so sorry."

"Not as sorry as they'll be if I find them." He took a huge, shuddering breath. "I should go and look after my mom and sister. I'll see you tomorrow."

Their soft goodbyes went unheard.

"Let's get home," said Phi. "I don't want to be around here anymore."

"I'll get my brother to walk you back," she said. "He needs the exercise."

She'd offered before and Phi had always laughed it off. Now she gazed out into the dark, and said, "You think they'd go after me?"

"I don't know," Celia answered. "But don't risk it."

She didn't say: you're human now, Phi. You aren't faster or stronger or more powerful than them. She didn't say: they hate you, and me, all of us. I don't know why, but it doesn't matter, does it?

They're tired of words. Now it's bricks and broken things, and the next thing they break might be us.

"You're sure Billy won't mind?" her best friend said hesitantly.

"Of course he'll mind. He's a jerk. But he'll do it."

Billy did whine and snarl and snap when they woke him up – but when he looked out to see the flashes of blue splintering the gloom like lightning, he put on his sneakers and took Phi home with hardly a grumble. He felt it too: the dark that had once been as soft and familiar as a toy blanket was now an army of shadows that could hide anything, anyone.

For the first time in years, Celia locked her bedroom door.

_He's there in the dark, he's there in my heart  
__He waits in the wings, he's gotta play a part  
__Trouble is a friend, yeah, trouble is a friend of mine  
_

-o0o-

Thanks for reading! Comments very much adored.


	3. Chapter 3

Well, happy May Day all! Many thanks to my very lovely readers - **Episkia,** **slstmaraudersjple, saba (**I'm glad to have started again - I'm never quite as happy as when I'm writing things. i hope you enjoy it!), **Izzy **(You can find Aurenna, Kurt and Sunny in The Fourth King, which is up on here. Aurenna is also the woman who has the dubious fame of discovering Blue on the enclave and taking him to the Furies. It's all one big intertwined world - there are a couple of other short stories that come into play here, which will show that consequences can be very slow-burning indeed. I do enjoy writing Celia's mom, and the families - which I didn't really get to do with the earlier stories as those characters didn't really have a lot of family left. Ah! Cynical leaf! You have been there right from the times of my terrible Tamora Pierce fic :) ), **Lorraine **(Thank you! Back, older, not remotely wiser.) and the awesome albeit slightly anonymous **Guest **(Thank you! It should be a fun ride.)

Lyrics come from Savage Garden's _To The Moon and Back._

**Sundogs and Shadowplay **

**III**

_She's taking her time making up the reasons  
__To justify all the hurt inside  
__Guess she knows from the smiles  
__And the look in their eyes  
__Everyone's got a theory about the bitter one_

Sleep-shorted and more rumpled than usual, Celia knocked on the door of Sunny's house. It opened onto a harangued Kurt who was holding a frying pan full of something that looked burned and smelled annihilated. Smoke wafted out around him, accompanied by the sound of a smoke alarm. Breakfast, it appeared, was not going well.

"Is it that time already?" he said ruefully. He turned away. "Sunshine! Get your ass down here."

"Quit nagging!" came back the shout from the top of the stairs.

"It's not nagging if I'm right!" he bellowed before waving Celia in. "She'll be a minute, which I've learned means somewhere between ten and twenty minutes, because apparently time does not work like I thought it did. Sorry about the smell. Bacon and I don't get on."

Celia edged around cardboard boxes as Sunny swept down the stairs in a soft scarlet jumper that showed a hint of cleavage, a miniskirt that was almost a nanoskirt, and knee high boots in clinging black suede. Her hair was a slithery mass of black curls, as smoky as her eyes. She looked beautiful, feral, and dangerous.

Kurt took one aghast look and put the pan down like he was gearing up for a prolonged battle. "Do you think that's an appropriate outfit?"

Sunny's eyes narrowed. "Yes."

"Wrong. Please go and change."

"Make me."

Kurt didn't raise his voice. He didn't move. He only looked at her with a kind of pity. "No, sunshine. That was your family's way, not mine. I am asking you to do this, because I know a little bit more than you do, and either you trust my judgment or you don't. You make your choice. I will still love you just as much, even if you make what I think is the wrong decision."

His words cut the heart right out of her – Celia saw it, and wondered just who had told Sunny that love was conditional, before Kurt came along to pick apart the lie.

This guy could give my mom some tips, she thought, impressed.

"Maybe it's too cold for this," said Sunny cautiously. Behind Kurt, the autumn sun streamed in through the windows.

He nodded, face grave. "Blue knees are not a good look. Celia, help an old man out – any thoughts on what _is_ a good look?"

"I'd go skinny jeans and courts," she offered. "But that outfit would be amazing for Friday."

Sunny heaved a sigh. "Fine. Give me just-"

"A minute," finished Kurt as she trotted back up the stairs. "Thanks, Celia. Sunny spent the last few years in a very different culture. We're all still figuring things out." He sighed. "I just want her to fit in."

She was beginning to wonder if Ri had been right about Nightfire, because this was not her expectation of what assassins would be like. Riose always spoke of them as if they were figures from myth, hardly human at all. But here one was, burning bacon and dishing out fashion critique and doing what all her friends parents did - worrying.

"She'll be fine," she offered. "I mean, apart from the fact she's going to get hit on a lot."

The look of horror was back. "Don't tell me that. No father wants to hear it."

"Don't worry," said Celia cheerfully. "I'll keep the creepy ones away."

He grimaced. "How about you keep them all away?"

"Nah. You need to adopt my mom's policy – keep your enemies close. If you really want to put them off, invite them round for dinner. Last time I had a boy over, my mom spent four hours grilling him on his knowledge of safe sex. She snuck in _pustules. _And she made him spell gonorrhoea. At the table. He still won't look me in the eye, and I don't think it's because he's ashamed of his spelling skills."

The corners of his mouth turned up. "I'm surprised you're telling me this."

"Please. Why should I suffer a life of celibacy alone?"

He laughed, and it wiped all the worry away. "Be careful what you wish for. The next few years are all hormones and heartache. I don't miss it."

"I'm done," announced Sunny, taking the stairs two at a time. She gave a little theatrical twirl at the bottom. "What do you think?"

"I still think that top's too low, but I know when to give in," said Kurt. "Be good. And if you can't be good, be discreet. Sure you're ready, sunshine?"

It felt like there was weight behind that mild question.

And for a moment, something very like fear flickered on Sunny's face. Then her mouth tightened and she said, "For anything."

-o0o-

The strangeness began before they reached school. Celia had been expecting stares, and upgraded her expectations from 'a few' to 'fighting them off with a two-by-four' when she saw the sinuous way that Sunny walked, echoes of a tiger stalking through the jungle in her lazy, swaying hips.

And there were stares aplenty. Lewis Bates drove past and did a full-on cartoon double-take accompanied by screeching brakes as he nearly whalloped the car in front. Nessa and her friends sized up Sunny as competition, all giggles and elbows.

But there were other reactions, too. Sam Sheldon wandered up as he sometimes did to chat in that soft, apologetic way – but then his lips tightened, his steps faltered…and with no warning, the werewolf turned away down a side street. When Morwenna Merrigan brushed past them, she shivered as if someone had walked over her grave then walked so fast it was almost a jog.

The entire way, Celia kept up a running commentary on who was who and what was what.

Who and what Sunny was, she didn't comment on at all. But she could feel the tension ratcheting up with every suspicious look, every twitch in someone's face. By the time they reached the gates, Sunny's heels cracked on the ground like a whip.

It was with some relief that she saw Finn and Riose waiting. Ri's brow furrowed a little as he saw them, but that could have meant anything. Finn, on the other hand, wore that huge, goofy grin. "Ladies!"

Sunny paused, then gave Finn a swooping stare, eyes glittering darkly. Her tone was icy. "Boy."

His smile dimmed. "Have I done something to offend you?"

She took a deep breath. Then another. And then her face softened, just a fraction. "Not yet." A long silence. "It's not easy being...here."

Celia had the distinct feeling Sunny meant something else entirely.

"It gets easier," said Riose, quietly. "You forget what they were like."

Sunny glanced at him. "Who?"

"The Furies."

The briefest pause. "The who?" said Sunny with such blithe innocence that Celia almost believed her.

Riose was still, in that way only he could be. The silence felt dangerous and fragile, like paper-thin glass shivering under pressure.

"My mistake," he said, and life flooded back into the world. "Welcome to Ryars Valley."

-o0o-

Celia hustled her from class to class, throwing out introductions with the reckless speed of an auctioneer. Heads kept turning, and hackles kept raising. Slowly, she began to work out the divide. The vampire, witches and humans didn't seem to notice anything.

It was the shapeshifters who were really bothered by Sunny.

Jo pulled her aside before American History, a frown marring her face. "Darling, something isn't right with that girl."

"Keep your voice down," she hissed, conscious that Sunny was only a few feet away. "What do you mean?"

The wildcat shook her head, like a cat trying to dash the rain from its fur. "I don't know. It's just...there's a buzz around her. Like – like when there's a wasp indoors and you know the damn thing's there, but you can't find it. Her power grates on me." She leaned in, coral mouth turned down. "Adrian feels it too."

Another one in the shapeshifter column. Jo's current squeeze was a foxy boy by day and a fox by night.

"Is it hurting you?" she asked, a touch concerned.

"No..." Jo paused, green eyes thoughtful. "It's just – unpleasant. And – and it's _there_, all the time."

"Maybe she can't help it," she suggested. "Maybe it's a spell. Or a curse."

Hands spread, Jo conceded. "I guess it could be. But until we know what it is, I'll grab lunch somewhere else."

-o0o-

By lunchtime, Celia could see that for all her nonchalant façade, Sunny was bothered by the reactions. So was she.

It said something about how weird it was that when Mike Stanislov bulldozed through the crowd to grab her by the elbow, she didn't do anything more painful than wrench away. "Mike. I'm guessing you want something."

He gave her his all-American golden boy grin. "Thought you could introduce me to your cousin."

"She's not my cousin," she and Sunny said in unison.

He looked puzzled. "Huh. Really." Then he had the gall to lean back and look the pair of them up and down. "I mean..."

"Mike," she snapped, glad to have a problem she could solve for once, "Please tell me that you didn't just assume we're related just because we're both Indian? Because there's a word for that."

"Uh..." Clearly he had. Which she supposed wasn't too surprising given that his limbs had his brain cells outnumbered two to one. "No. No. It's because you're both pretty."

Beside her, she heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like Sunny choking on disbelief.

Still. She couldn't be bothered to have this argument today. "Good save. Still want to be introduced? Free hint: I will introduce you as That Meathead Mike."

His slate-grey eyes narrowed. "Maybe later, then."

Maybe not, he meant. They'd never really got on, but mostly because they moved in different circles. Celia watched him go, and said, "Lucky escape, Sunny."

A faint smile touched her berry-red lips. "I keep hearing that."

Celia swung open her locker, studiously ignoring the words splattered across the door. She dug for her books.

"Weird..." breathed Sunny. Her fingers brushed the words-

She jolted back with a cry. Alarmed, Celia slammed the locker shut to catch the last traces of something twisting her face, a hate so vicious that she was grotesque, unrecognisable...

No, thought Celia, awareness tugging at her like a toothache. I know that expression – I've seen it before.

"Are you okay?" she said, uncertain.

Breathing hard, Sunny shook her fingers. "Static shock," she said blithely.

Like hell. But Celia let it go, for now.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the pod boys skirt right to the other side of the hall to go past. Sunny's expression didn't change, but her hands were white-knuckled on her books.

Celia opened her mouth to say something comforting, and staggered as Ness hip-checked her out of the way. Suddenly her vision was full of caramel-gold hair and immaculately tailored legs. The gossip girls had swooped.

"You must be the new girl," chirped Ness, slinging a friendly arm through Sunny's. "I love that top, where did you get it?"

"It's Sunny, isn't it?" said Kirsty Ausner, who had the white-blond hair of a Viking. Celia often suspected that if the school had allowed it, her long plait would have spikes attached to the end. No one got in the way when Kirsty was charging down the field brandishing a hockey stick. "Where are you from? Your accent's so cute. All the boys are going mad over it."

"A bit of everywhere," stammered Sunny, as they cooed over her clothes, her bag, her jewellery. "I was born in Dehli, but my parents travelled a lot. We lived in England and France and Italy-"

"Oh my god!" squeaked Leanne Ducharme, who was five foot nothing teetering on four inch heels. "That must have been amazing, You have to tell us about it."

In an instant, Sunny was swept away on a sea of chatter. Slightly stunned, Celia watched them go. Part of her was miffed that Sunny didn't look back. Another part was glad that someone had accepted her so easily and wholeheartedly, even if it was more to do with her sense of style than her sense of self.

The bell rang, and she was miles from her next class. With a groan, Celia hurried on alone.

-o0o-

"My favourite lab partner. Are you ready for another nine weeks of wild scientific fun?"

Celia grinned at the tall boy who nudged his books aside so she could drop her bag down. Will Ratner was a refreshing slice of normality in what was another strange day. "Only with you."

She'd always liked his eyes, the warm brown of melted chocolate, which gleamed when he smiled, as he often did. "Smooth, Slone. I bet you say that to all the boys."

"Didn't know you were a gambling man," she said lightly.

A dimple popped in his cheek. "If I was, I'd lay odds on Lewis asking out your new friend before lunchtime. He is smitten."

She rolled her eyes. "Is that why he made that lame excuse to go to the secretary's office?"

"You know Lew. The early worm gets the bird." Will picked up the instructions and they began to lay out the experiment. "I think he figured he'd swoop in and rescue her from a pile of paperwork." There was a quiver low in his voice, and when she glanced across, it was matched by the mischief in his eyes.

"How did that work out?"

"Well, seems like him, and Mike Stanislov, and your friend Finn all had the same idea. So they sat through an hour of awkward silence and passive-aggressive staring before Lew cracked and left."

She choked down a giggle at the picture. "Poor Sunny. Friday should be interesting."

"You invited her?" Will groaned. "Oh god. That means I've got three more days of listening to Lewis plan the great seduction."

They delved into the experiment. Time ticked away as the Bunsen burner did mysterious things to mysterious substances. Across the room, Adrian Reynard managed to smash a test tube. Murmurs rumbled on the air.

At last they were done, a little before most pairs. Celia put down her pen and flexed her aching hand. "I'm so out of practice writing."

"Who isn't?" said Will.

"Well, whoever defaced the lockers kept their hand in. Did you hear about that?"

Copying her notes, he sounded distracted. "I heard something. Grace and Nessa?"

"And me."

"What?" His head snapped up, those honest eyes wide and just a little fierce. "You? Why the hell would anyone do that to you?"

"Why would anyone do it to Grace or Ness?" she said rhetorically.

"I can think of a few reasons." He scrubbed a hand through dishevelled brown hair. "Cee, you don't see it, but...they're not the nicest people."

Privately, Celia didn't much like Grace, who still turned her nose up every time Phi walked past – who'd called her selfish for refusing to grant her a prophecy, even knowing every glimpse into the future pared down Phi's life like a candle dissolving under the flame. And Ness...well, Ness had her clique and you were in, or you were gossip.

"Maybe someone thinks that about me too," she said.

"I don't think so," he muttered, then gave a shrug. For a few minutes, they worked in silence, Celia taking notes while Will called out observations. Then he said, quietly, "What did it say?"

"What?" It took a moment to realise. "Oh. Vamp tramp."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He sounded angry. And Celia felt oddly gratified, because it meant he didn't see her like Grace, like Ness. And it meant something else – even after growing up in Ryars Valley, Will still didn't know about the Nightworld.

She was glad of it. Someone should see the stars in the darkness and not the shadows, because she wasn't able to anymore. Someone should see that splatter of graffiti and think _why _and not _who_, because the why, the hate, the fear, was so obvious to her.

So she smiled, because then his eyes softened, and that roguish gleam was back. She smiled, and pretended it didn't matter because with Will, she could fool herself into thinking it didn't.

"Nothing," she said. "Empty words."

"Okay, Slone. I'll believe it – today. But only because that's a hell of a smile."

Oh. _Oh. _"Are you flirting with me?"

His smile was slow as sunrise, filling up his eyes. "Hopefully. Will you go to Farrier's party with me on Friday?"

She paused, and the bell rang.

His face was a picture – and she knew the warm joy of being a girl with a power all her own, a sorceress even if her magic was in the tilt of her smile and the turn of her head. For this one moment, this one boy, she who was so ordinary became extraordinary.

So Celia tipped him a wink, and said, "Hopefully."

-o0o-

"Darling!" Jo threw an arm around her shoulders as they headed to lunch. "Did I hear right? Do you have a date for Friday?"

"You heard right." Celia narrowed her eyes. "How did you hear?"

"Supernatural," said Jo, tapping her ear. "It's just part of the package. At last. I thought he'd never get round to it. Finn owes me twenty bucks."

"What? Will got his act together?" Finn joined them, frowning. "Unbelievable."

"Did everyone know?" said Celia, exasperated.

"Please," said Finn grumpily. "He's always had a thing for you. I can't believe you said yes, though. He's shifty."

"Finn, you think everyone with a Y chromosome is shifty."

"That's because they are. Know how I know? I have one. It's a curse." He sounded thoroughly morose.

Celia swapped a meaningful look with Jo. "Things didn't go well with Sunny, then."

His dark blue eyes were wounded. "She didn't even notice me."

She doubted that, somehow. Finn was many things, but subtle was not one of them. "It's her first day, Finn. Maybe she doesn't want guys hitting on her."

"I wasn't going to hit on her!" he said. Both of them stopped and looked at him. "All right, not much!"

"Darling, you know what you need to do. Or not do. Don't be a stalker. Nobody wants to date their stalker," Jo said, giving him a prod in the stomach. Sunlight gleamed like fire in his hair as they headed outside.

"Except for Phi," he muttered sulkily.

"Special case," said the wildcat. "Mostly because he's her soulmate, and you can be excused a little weird behaviour when all your role models enslaved, tortured or imprisoned you. And he did actually, you know, die for her."

"Yeah, well, I don't think it counts if you come back to life."

Celia swallowed a giggle. There was no reasoning with Finn when he was in one of these moods. He'd snap out of it soon enough. She sat down on the springy grass, stretching out in the warmth of autumn. "Finn, will anyone ever be good enough for any of us?"

"Will Ratner _definitely_ isn't good enough," he said firmly.

"Good enough for what?" said Riose, joining them. In the distance, she could see Sunny with Nessa and her girls. Lewis was there too, as he generally was, and Mike Stanislov was looming over all them all, sandwich in his hand and Sunny in his sights.

"Celia."

"Well, we're agreed on that," he said amiably.

Celia looked from one to the other. "Oh, come on. What's wrong with him?"

"Anyone who grows up here and manages to miss that half of us aren't human isn't the sharpest tool in the box," proclaimed Finn. "I can't believe you said yes to going with him on Friday."

He looked at Riose for some reason. So Celia did too, but his expression didn't change.

"He's not the only one!" she protested. "And who says that's a bad thing?"

"Ryars Valley is dangerous," said Riose flatly. "You know that."

His gaze skipped to her hand, and she knew he was thinking of the night her fingers had been broken. The night she had become a pawn in a lethal game of chess, fumbling blindly across a chequerboard world of light and shadow while around her the inhuman courts waged their violent pitiless war.

"Not the parts Will lives in," she said quietly.

His eyes were very intense, the bright blue of aquamarine. "Those parts too. The difference is that he's blind to it. Him and all the other moles." There was a certain thoughtless contempt in his voice.

"A mole? Is this another of those terms you guys don't use around me?"

There was a very awkward silence that confirmed exactly that. Anger welled up slowly in her. She was so tired of being protected or sheltered or disregarded, whichever they thought it was.

"Explain. Right now."

"Moles. Humans who choose not to know the truth." His voice was casual. "Blind things, surrounded by darkness, digging their own grave."

The coldness of it sliced through her. Then anger welled up like blood in a cut. Something must have shown in her face, because Jo and Finn looked at each other and then made some ridiculous excuse to disappear. Celia hardly noticed. She faced Riose, fire in her eyes and on her lips.

"So what is it you want from us humans, exactly? When we know, we're in danger. When we don't know, we're..." A bitter half-smile twisted her lips. "Vermin."

She saw the moment it clicked in his head – that moment when she said _us humans_, and Celia realised he didn't count her in that number. There was a sort of shock that flashed through his eyes then was gone. "Be one or the other. But not both. You can't mix those worlds, Cee. You can't dance into his safe, shiny world and pretend not to know. And you can't drag him into our world, warm from the sunlight, and then wonder why he starts to feel the cold. Why he starts to _fear_."

"I'm not afraid of you," she said quietly.

"You never were. You don't know how unusual that is. Most kids – they sense something. It's hard to hide when you're younger. We get it wrong. And they know, and they're scared. Start looking, Cee. There's a line between us. It's always been there. You just never noticed it."

"Then why can't I keep crossing it?" she flung back, frustrated and not understanding the ice in him.

Riose looked at her and his voice was empty as he said, "Because you set the example. You crossed the line, and now so are others. Whoever's doing all this, Cee, they're human. And they're here. And they don't think there will be any reprisal because we've broken our own rules. We let you _know_. And then we let you live."

"Riose," she said very softly, talking to her friend of ten years, who seemed shut away behind the mask of this bleak stranger, "What are you saying?"

"It's not just a date, Cee," he said. "It's crossing the line. And right now – _right now – _every supernatural in this school is watching that line, because someone's telling these people what we are. You're already a target for one side. Don't become a target for the other."

"You can vouch for me."

"No. Not on this." The distance between them felt like an abyss.

"Why not?"

He wouldn't meet her eyes. His voice sounded very flat as he said, "Because I don't know for sure."

Shock knocked her anger clean away, leaving her raw. "I see."

Then Celia turned her back on him, trembling, and walked away. Her chest hitched, tight with pain, because Riose had betrayed her, easy as a click of the fingers.

She wanted to say, _I've bled for you, I know your past, all darkness and thoughtless cruelty, and I didn't run because I believe you are better than that, but the first hint of a whisper of a shadow on me, and you run._

His voice drifted to her. "Celia...it's not...that's not..."

She didn't care what it wasn't. So she kept walking, one foot in front of the next, calm as if she was just strolling in the sunshine. After all, they were watching; watching their stupid line, blind as moles to the fractures that forked through her.

And she didn't say anything to anyone she passed. There was no room for words in her throat; it was packed tight with tears.

_Love is like a barren place  
__And reaching out for human faith is  
__Is like a journey I just don't have a map for_

-o0o-

Thanks for reading! Comments always absolutely adored


	4. Chapter 4

Evening all from the icy North! Many thanks to the amazeballs (oh yes, I went there. I'll show myself out.) people who commented last time - thanks you **Episkia **(Yep - you've got it...lots of fun with this title. Will comes to life in this one after a cursory mention in Ripples, it was one of those lovely click moments where an idea sprang to life.), **Guest **(Celia and Riose have always been fun to write - and they definitely get centre-stage for this one), **Lorraine **(Good job none of the Slones are supernatural; I think they'd thoroughly upset the balance in their bit of the world. And some fun to come later on with them...), **Becki **(Thank you! I hope for a repeat!), and finally, fabulously, the tongue-twisting **slstmaraudersjple**.

Lyrics from _If You're Gone _by Matchbox Twenty.

I hope you enjoy!

**Sundogs &amp; Shadowplay**

IV

_I think I've already lost you  
I think you're already gone  
I think I'm finally scared now  
And you think I'm weak,  
I think you're wrong__  
_

"That didn't seem like it went well."

Riose turned slowly. Arch's voice was cautious, and he kept a few feet away. "It didn't."

"Did you ask her?"

"Why do you think it didn't go well?" he snapped.

When Arch and the others had approached him between classes, Riose had been incredulous. How on earth could they think Celia had anything to do with the graffiti? It had been in her locker too.

Arch had held up his hands, pacifying. "I'm not saying she's done it deliberately. But she's the only human who knows about us. What if she let something slip accidentally? She's got human friends."

Riose had stared at him. "So have I."

"We need to know, Riose. This is getting serious." Fury stirred in Arch's eyes like the storm clouds looming on the horizon. "My little sister found that rabbit. She's eight. She cried all night. _Someone_ is telling humans what we are."

"Not Cee."

"Then who?"

He didn't have an answer, of course. "I'll talk to her," he said reluctantly. "But it's not her."

The conversation hadn't gone how he meant it to. It had sounded very logical in his head – there were sides forming, and just for now, Celia needed to show she was on the right side. Until it all blew over. But all his logic had become a thorny mess at the mention of Will Ratner, and somehow that had got tangled up with what he was trying to say.

"I royally screwed that one up," he muttered.

Arch gave him a tired grin. "Been there, done that. She'll get over it. And if she doesn't..." He gave a lazy shrug. "Maybe that's for the best."

He wasn't prepared for the anger that boiled into his words. "Best for who, exactly?"

Not for her. Not for him. There was no one else who knew Celia like he did, who knew exactly how bold and impulsive she could be. No one else who could keep her safe in the murky, treacherous world of predators and sorcery and bloodshed, comprehending as he did the exact depth and darkness of the shadows that he would not allow to touch her.

And there no one else who called to him like she did. In a world of uncertainty, of shifting loyalties, Celia shone as clear and golden as a pillar of fire. She was so unafraid, and it awed him. She spoke her mind, she looked straight into his heart and reminded him who it was he wanted to be.

"It was a platitude," Arch said dryly. "You know, those things you and Finn kept saying to me after I broke up with Ness."

Some of his irritation melted away. "Yeah. Sorry."

"Look, man, if you're really that bothered, give it some time, then grovel. Girls love it when you grovel." He paused. "Except that new chick. She's had guys grovelling all day and she looks like she wants to tear someone's head off."

Riose followed his gaze. Sunny was in the middle of Ness and her friends, whose always-crowded table had picked up more than the usual amount of hangers-on. She should have belonged, another pretty girl in the glossy, bright flock, shiny hair and sharp fashion. But the chatter flashed around her, across her, their friendliness rebounding from her shuttered face. She was tense, space either side of her where everyone else was crammed comfortably together.

He had never seen anyone so lonely in the middle of a crowd.

"I'd steer clear."

"I plan to." Arch hesitated. "What is she?"

He shrugged. "No idea. She's got good wards."

Arch's look was disbelieving. "You kidding me? Every time I go near her it's like someone's dragging their nails on a chalkboard. Only instead of a chalkboard, it's the inside of my skull. You really don't feel it?"

"Nope. Sure it's not just a cheap charm one of the girls is wearing?"

"Every shifter I've spoken to feels it. There's something wrong about that girl."

Weird. But not unheard of. He felt a prickle of interest, the crawling thrill of the hunt. It would be so easy to call a couple of people in the Furies, ask a few questions...find out the truth.

And it seemed he heard Celia in his head. _Or maybe it's her first day and she's nervous._

"You're right," he muttered, and wasn't sure which one of them he had answered.

-o0o-

Celia spent the rest of the day in a storm of emotion. Her friends left her alone, which suited her just fine. She made it through the afternoon and escaped. There was someone she wanted to talk to.

She found her brother-in-law tinkering with the engine on a particularly ancient car. His garage was a halfway house between a junkyard and a bachelor pad, but homey touches were all around in the easy chair, the framed pictures of his son and the chipped mug that said _World's Most Dangerous Dad, _which was a joke with an edge.

By the time she got there, she was more angry than upset, but she kept it under wraps. "Hey, Aspen."

He didn't look up, dark head bent over mysterious metal things. "Wench! Perfect timing. It's nearly-"

There was a great coughing sound and black smoke puffed from the hood, reeking of oil. He whipped out a wire with an air of triumph.

"-done!" he said, looking very pleased with himself. "Now I just need your help."

She eyed his hands, smeared grey. "With what?"

"I'm putting some wards into the car. But the more power you have, the more they sting. I figured you probably won't get more than a static shock."

Aspen was probably the only mechanic in Ryars Valley who thought nothing of mixing magic and machinery. Once an assassin, vampire and leader of the Furies, he had found his soulmate in her practical sister, turned his back on the Nightworld – mostly – and become a vaguely respectable member of society.

Respectable, but rarely sensible.

He was so changed from the rail-thin, wild boy that her sister had brought home one night, Celia could sometimes hardly believe it. When she first met him, she thought he was crazy. Only later had she seen what her sister did: his loyalty and his shy kindness.

"You're warding the car?" she said. "Who's it for?"

"Your friend Finn. His dad seemed worried he might blow up the car." Aspen grinned. "I thought your mom was overprotective till I met him."

She snorted. "He's not overprotective. Finn's blown up at least three barbecues I know of, and every time he gets riled, there's a very real chance something will catch fire. Occasionally it's him."

His mismatched eyes, which she could never quite get used to, widened. "Oh. Well, there's not much I can do if he sets the interior on fire, but the engine should be safe." He wiped his hands with a rag. "Come here and let's get started. I promised I'd have it ready for Friday."

Aspen talked her through it, infinitely patient. She lost herself in the task for a little while, and when the last part clicked into place, she felt a little better. Most weekends she spent some time here, ostensibly because she wanted to know about cars, but mostly because Zane, Aspen's son and her adopted nephew, was going through a big biting phase, and she wasn't too keen on puncture wounds.

"Great job." Aspen cracked open a can of coke and handed it to her. "So, want to tell me who upset you?"

"How did you know?"

"You're here on your own. And given that school only finished ten minutes ago, you set a hell of a pace to get here. So either you're desperate for my company, or you didn't want to see any of your friends." He gave her a nudge. "What's happened?"

"Riose and I had a fight." She felt some of the tension seep out of her with the words. If anyone could help, it was Aspen. He knew exactly how it felt to stand halfway between two worlds.

"About..?"

"He told me that I couldn't have human friends. It got messy." At his inquiring look, Celia gave him a run-through of the argument. He listened silently, leaning on the car.

"He didn't handle that too well," was his first comment. "That the first time you've had this argument?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. So let's be clear – you've been friends with a vampire who used to be one of the Furies for over ten years, and this is the first time he's acted like an ass about the whole them and us thing?" He waved his hand in a great circle.

"Yes..."

"Then this was way overdue. You know how often Tam and I have argued about this?" She shook her head. "Dozens," he announced. "You know what stopped it?"

She glanced at the wedding ring on his hand. "Getting married?"

"Hell no! Getting bored. Here's the thing, Cee. He's right." At her indignant look, he held up a finger. "And you're right. There's no easy answer, though you both think there is. We are different. You're my little sister by law, and I'd kill for you – but there's a side of me you hardly know. You've seen it, a little, because..." The old pain flashed in his eyes, but he carried on. "I'm damaged."

Sometimes, Aspen had screamed in his sleep. Celia had heard it from her room; she'd heard him crying. When she asked her mother, she'd just said gently that Aspen had some bad memories. _But he's safe here_, she'd said, and her mother had answered, _I know. But he doesn't, so we need to help him learn that._

Aspen had looked astonished the first time Celia had shaken him awake, squished a bear down by him and told him that it would guard him. _He's yours_, she'd said, and he'd said, _But what about you? _

_I've got a big brother now. You'll have to protect me, _she'd told him.

_Me? _he'd said, staring at her like she might be lying. When she nodded, he'd looked so proud. _Me._

"Everyone is," she said fiercely, and he cracked a weary grin.

"I can't pretend the way some of the others can. That darkness...sometimes I control it, and sometimes it controls me. You don't have that in you, Cee. You never look at someone else and see prey. See something you can use, you can hurt, because they don't really matter." He sounded desperately sad, desperately ashamed. But he didn't look away from her.

And it struck her that he'd never treated her like she needed to be protected. He didn't shelter her. Aspen told her the truth, in all its grim unvarnished glory, and let her make her own choice.

She owed him the truth in return. "I know it's there. I see it." He flinched, but she pressed on, gentle now. "Every time, every single time, you choose the other way."

Some of the tension fell away from him. "I do. But that divide is always there. And you know when it gets scary? When kids who've never been anything but the top of the food chain are on the other side. Suddenly, you feel what it's like to be hunted, and it makes people behave in weird ways. And it's even worse if someone targets one of your friends because of you."

"He accused me of..." The lump in her throat came back, like a knot of barbed wire.

"Yeah. I'd be angry too." He took one look at the tear that had escaped her, despite her best efforts, and gave her a hug. "So here's my advice, for what it's worth. Don't be angry too long. Don't let some paint and some panic break your friendship. That's what these creepy graffiti people want, so you ram your friendship down their throats and let them choke on it."

She giggled, because it was typically Aspen advice. True, and just a little offbeat.

"Thanks big bro," she murmured, and his smile lit up, full of all the humanity he didn't believe he had.

-o0o-

The door slammed like a thunderbolt had hit it.

As Sunny stormed in, Kurt said calmly, "Good first day, I take it."

She dumped her bag down as if it was full of bricks. "They're scared of me. Some of them – they turned their backs on me. They _ran_." Her voice splintered, revealing anguish. "And then I had to sit there, feeling what they felt...all that fear and jealousy and _need_, they need so much. It was so hard not to just...take it all from them."

She wrapped her arms around herself, looking young and lost.

"I'd be helping them, really," she muttered. "They can't like feeling that way."

"Sunshine," he said softly. "They might not, but that doesn't mean you can steal it from them."

Her head drooped like a snowbell. "It would be easy."

"Nothing worth having is easy," he said, though the words stung him deeply to say. Most days, his life had the bitter tang of ashes. That was all that was left.

Sunny looked at him with those eyes as fathomless as the deep ocean abysses. "You think this is worth having? Renna gave her memories to demons and now she doesn't even know who you are. I'm...look at me. I'm a monster. And all I can hear is your heart breaking, Kurt, and it makes me _hungry_. You should have left me there."

Her skin shimmered like fire moved under it. He felt the heat pouring from her, the choking close embrace of another world, and he didn't flinch. He dared not; one ounce of fear, and he'd lose her. They had lost her once, and it had nearly undone them. Twice – he wouldn't let it happen, even though her hair wafted in an unseen breeze, even though the eyes that regarded him with such savage anger were not even close to human.

"How can I be normal?" she demanded, and other voices screamed with her from the frayed edges of another world, furious and discordant.

He stood, using every advantage he had, hoping he could hold his strange, changed daughter to the world. He looked down at her, face calm. "By choosing to be."

"You think it's that easy?"

"Did you listen to what I just said?" he said mildly. "It won't be easy. But do you think you're the first person to be changed into something you don't want to be? To feel like you don't belong anymore? Sweetheart, welcome to the world, where everyone's got an opinion on you, and they won't all be good."

"I could make them good," she said fiercely.

"Compulsion was your father's tool, too."

She flinched. "I'm not him!"

"Not yet," he said, and then he held out his hand. He let his emotions drift from his control; his worry that she would make the wrong choice, his sorrow for what she had lost, his hope for what she had gained.

And his heartbreak too. That was always there.

"Take them," he said quietly. "Freely given, sunshine, truly felt."

Her fingers were feather-light on his: the feelings withered into shadows of themselves, and he saw her face change as she experienced his emotions. Like sunrise in winter, she'd told him. Like the only real warmth.

My daughter, not by blood, but by choice. A demon, not by choice, but by blood. A wonder and a horror.

And no way of knowing which would triumph.

-o0o-

Celia woke up slowly, confused. It wasn't morning because her room was dark, and something was rattling on her window like the wind was dashing pebbles against the glass. Must be raining, she thought hazily, eyes inching open. Her skylight revealed only a night as plush and clear as indigo velvet.

She sat bolt upright.

It wasn't the wind dashing pebbles.

Shoving back the covers, she headed over to the window, thoroughly grumpy. Her clock said two a.m. and her inner psychopath said it was going to be murder o'clock if this wasn't really, really important.

She elbowed it open.

Riose was there. Even in the woolly shadows of deep night, she knew his silhouette.

"What do you want?" she hissed.

His face was a blur, unreadable. "I can't sleep."

For Riose, that was quite a statement. His ability to sleep anywhere could make a narcoleptic look like they just weren't trying. But that didn't do anything to mitigate her unease. "So why are you here?"

"I need to talk to you. Please." His voice had a rough edge. "Cee..."

She stepped back so he couldn't see her face. Her emotions were a jumble. Aspen's advice echoed in her mind.

She could go back to bed, stay angry, burrow down into the covers, and ignore him.

Celia pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, which ached miserably. She felt hollowed out, like she could sleep for a thousand years and still be tired.

No. She was going to do the right thing. Riose deserved that.

She leaned back out. "Wait there."

Celia dressed hastily, then slid along the hallway with the stealth of a ninja on a nightingale floor. Her mother was probably asleep, like any sane person would be, but there was no point getting sloppy. Billy had learned that lesson for the both of them when he tried to sneak his girlfriend into his room last year.

Their mother hadn't shouted. No, that would have been tolerable. Instead, she very sweetly assumed that both of them must be bored to be so awake at night, and it was her duty as a parent to distract them from such paralysing tedium. By five a.m., Billy and his girlfriend had endured sixteen games of Risk, which Celia suspected was her mother's way of pointing out the game that Billy had been playing. Her mother called it a night when she annihilated the pair of them for the sixteenth time, smug in the knowledge that neither wanted to do anything but sleep.

Shortly after that, surprisingly, they broke up.

Celia was too wise for such madness. Inviting boys into her bedroom was a swift road to a Game of Life marathon, with additional subtext. Being caught outside was much less fraught.

She closed the front door behind her with a snick.

Riose was waiting. The shadows masked him, revealing little more than slices – the angle of his cheekbone, the knots of his knuckles, clenched in a fist. He was carrying a rucksack, which was odd.

Without saying anything, he turned, and started walking.

Puzzled, Celia fell in beside him, but kept a careful distance. Under the bluish light of the witching hour, familiar streets became shapeless and alien, her feet clumsy on an invisible surface. She kept blinking, as if the darkness would somehow recede. When they turned a corner into a lit street, she sagged with relief.

She risked a sideways glance. His face was set and severe, eyelashes lowered to veil any emotions she might have discerned. "Ri, where are we going?"

No answer but his footsteps. This was a new world, a waiting world. The buildings were dark, the roads deserted and she felt exposed to anything that might be watching.

And things were watching. She felt that too, prickling down her spine.

Something rose on the darkness, a faint, throaty snarl. She made a noise in answer, a stupid whimper that came unbidden. Celia knew, suddenly, what the rabbit must feel like before the wolf's jaws close on its neck, quivering beneath hot breath.

"What is that?" she said, voice too shrill.

"They know what I'm doing. They don't like it," he said shortly.

"What...what are you doing?"

His teeth had the muted gleam of moonstone. It was not a smile. "Showing you our secrets."

"I can see why they're angry."

He sighed. And then he stopped, and for the first time, his eyes met hers. In them, darkness, deep and still as a well. "They're not angry, Cee."

The question lay on her lips. He saw it, and then he did smile, but it was crooked.

"They're afraid."

"Oh," she said softly, and some of her fear dulled. "Then I guess we have something in common."

-o0o-

Like everything the Furies touched, the house was coated in secrets thick as dust. Long after midnight, Sunny wound down the spiral stairs into the basement, which was far larger than the exterior of the house implied. The lights flared on, reflected in the sheen of the dark wooden floor like gold moons under water. Around the walls, cabinets held an array of weapons, all of which she knew how to use. Had known.

Here, at least, she felt at home.

It was quiet, everything in soft muted colours like a cocoon. She needed that desperately.

Her feet made barely a whisper of sound on the boards which gave a little under her feet. It was old wood, full of memories that drifted up from it, a faint gold mist tangling around her ankles that no one else could see.

This was what being a demon meant – seeing everywhere the touches of human hands, human emotions. The world was a vast, whirling clamour, halfway between hurricane and sandstorm. She had tried to tell Kurt, but her words became clumsy, as useless as explaining technicolour to someone in a sepia world. Places like this - empty of emotions - were almost holy to her now.

The cabinets swung open and she drew out a quarterstaff. It was an unusual choice – solid in her hands, without the flashiness of knives or the precision of a gun.

It was about as far from a sword of stars as you could get. And that suited her fine.

It had been a very long time since she'd practised. Six long years in a world where there was no need for such mortal instruments. Demons fought their battles with other weapons, existing in ways so strange that she'd barely been able to grasp them. For a time, she'd convinced herself that she'd gone mad – the demon world that warped and flexed with every passing thought could not be real. So it must be her who had broken, and if she could just claw her way out of her mind, her prison, it would all be all right.

She couldn't, of course, and it wasn't.

The anger filled her up, warm and acid and comforting as mulled wine. She put it to use; for the first time in four years, she swung the quarterstaff in the old patterns, beginning to step through the moves.

She was rusty, but her body remembered. Her arm muscles protested at the apex of each swing, the staff looping back and forth in slow motion. The move that looked so serene now could crack a man's skull like a watermelon at full speed.

Well. It would if she could just get the staff to move how she wanted. She imagined that her target was all those staring, squeamish shapeshifters, and suddenly the air whistled under her blows. You want to run? Run, then, but run for a better reason! Run because I'm hunting you, because you're afraid of _me_, not what I can't help being.

Run, leave me, like all the rest.

Faster and faster she stepped, treading an almost circle in the basement, lost. So lost she didn't notice the figure who came light-footed down the staircase until he interrupted her.

"Your balance is off."

She stopped mid-move, stung. "It is not." She eyed the man who sat on the bottom steps, hands linked loosely between his knees. "But my control isn't what it used to be."

"Agreed," said Blue Malefici, who had discovered her in Delhi, scrabbling among the rubbish for food. "And your balance is off."

She sniffed to show him what she thought of that. "Why are you here?"

"To see if my latest acquisition was worth the trouble. And to check on Aurenna."

"Like you care."

Those cold, bright eyes were unnervingly focused on her. "Not in the way you mean. Blind sentimentality is not my strength."

"I always thought you saw it as a weakness," she remarked, knowing he wouldn't be offended. Kurt and Aurenna never seemed to enjoy their conversations with Blue like she did, and she'd always wondered why. Talking to Blue was like a fight in itself, and she revelled in the back and forth, the feints, the ever-shifting ground. He wasn't easy, but he was interesting.

He nodded. "I did. And most of the time it is. But – emotions have their uses. As I imagine you know very well."

She stiffened. "I didn't ask for this."

"Yet here you are. The only demon to ever return to our world. No one can teach you how to be what you are. You will have to learn for yourself. One can only hope you don't have a fool for a teacher. I've given you what you need to begin."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"A secure home, time, and the people who, contrary to all logic, common sense and my sound advice, love you."

She slammed the quarterstaff onto the floor. "You think I'm safe here? Every shapeshifter in the place treats me like poison."

Blue flicked his fingers; suddenly the staff twisted from her grasp. It pinwheeled so fast it became only a dark blur, suspended mid-air in a way that could only be magic. Something vampires didn't generally possess.

His voice was ice and emptiness. "I said secure, not safe. I am not going to shelter you from the reality of what you are, or what the world is. Learn to cope, or die."

Sunny stared. "How are you doing that?"

"You aren't the only one who has powers past what they were born with." Just as quickly, the staff jolted to stillness, and fell; she caught it just above the ground.

"How did you cope?" she said slowly.

"I accepted them. Eventually."

She waited, knowing his stillness was that of decision and not silence.

"Accepting the power was simple. But power is not free. And if you cannot accept everything else that comes with it, then you will never be more than a pawn in the game." Blue stood, still taller than her by half a foot. But she no longer had to look up so far to meet his eyes. "Somehow, I don't think you'll settle for that."

"No," she whispered. "But I'm afraid."

"Of what?" There was no sympathy in his face. The first time she'd met him in Delhi, she'd been five, and awed by the bright blue of his hair and eyes, which had seemed to her an echo of the painted gods gazing down from the temple walls, his expression as distant and uncaring.

"What I might become." The shadow of her parents stretched over her; the demon king, who'd sold his wife for power. And her mother, who'd given up what remained of her soul for revenge. Against them, those dark wavering figures, she set Kurt and Aurenna like talismans, hoping she could be better than her bloodline.

"Then you're a fool." He stalked past her, picking out a quarterstaff of his own. It was six foot long, made of shiny black wood that reminded her of obsidian. "You can become only what you choose to be. Competent, for example."

He didn't wait – he threw a vicious blow at her and she had blocked before she realised. Her body, faithful, remembered the moves, his strategies, his speed, but now she found that she could match him.

They danced back and forth, all her focus on their fight. She was herself again, someone capable, strong, someone who defied the odds and defied the omens and defied the whole damn world because she could.

Sunny realised she was smiling.

Blue apparently took that as a sign that she wasn't working hard enough. The pace picked up another notch and impact after impact slammed through her wrists, her back, her legs.

He was starting to wear her down, as he always did. A blow landed hard on her shoulder, and Sunny's grip slid on the staff as her fingers loosened in reaction. She countered fast, spinning the staff in a series of moves that caught him on the shin and chest, moves she could never have done before.

A thrill went through her. Maybe she could beat him this time, maybe-

She was outstretched, on the apex of a defensive move, and he nudged her foot with his own.

To her horror, her leg went from under her and Sunny hit the floor with an almighty thump. She landed badly, pain wrenching through her back, and she instinctually kicked out in the hope of bringing Blue down with her.

He'd moved. Of course.

Blue hauled her up with no regard for her gasp of pain. "So. We can both agree that you were faster and stronger in that fight. Why did I beat you?"

She glared. He seemed totally unmoved. "My balance was off."

"I see. Were you worried about devouring my soul?"

"I'd probably starve," she muttered sulkily.

His lips curved. He thought she was funny. That was the humiliation-soaked cherry on the sunken cake of defeat. "Did that fall hurt?"

"You know it did."

"And what was your first reaction?"

Then she understood. And something released inside her chest, a tension she hadn't known was squeezed like a fist around her heart. "To kick you."

To behave like a person, Not a demon.

"Oh," she breathed.

"We'll both have to live with the disappointment. Not least because I was thinking very hard of that travesty I call a brother in the hope you'd erase him from my existence." He scooped up both weapons and put them back into the cabinet. "Your footwork is appalling, your grip is weak, and any adequate assassin could quickly halve the number of demons walking the earth with one well-placed tripwire. Ensure you train with Schrader. I will be dropping in, and next time I won't go easy on you."

Sunny nearly choked. "That was not easy!"

A wave of black, choking power flattened her to the ground, sending another spike of pain through her body. It was gone before she could react, leaving her even more angry. "Wrong."

He was halfway up the stairs, nothing but his shadow left, before she heard his parting words.

"Get your balance back, Sunita. If you can't walk a razor's edge, you won't survive."

-o0o-

"This is what I wanted you to see."

They were squeezed into the narrow alley behind The Chill, Ryars Valley's premium – and only – nightclub. Barely wide enough to walk down, the entrance was narrowed further by bins. But beyond it, there was a shaded wall.

Celia widened her eyes, but it was too dark to make anything out. "Is this one of those things I need night vision for?"

"Damn." Riose fumbled in his pockets, then handed over his cellphone. "Try this."

It wasn't much of a torch, but it was enough. She held it up to the bricks and the pool of light illuminated what looked like a list. Celia tilted it up, and saw the title in bright blue: _The names of the damned._

"What is this?" she breathed. She scanned down it. Some names were unfamiliar. Some she recognised as Tam's friends. _Rob Slivan_ was crossed through with a streak of white paint. When the phone highlighted _Jason Ratner_, she wondered if he was any relation to Will. Further down, between _Mike Stanislov_ and _Leanne Ducharme_ she saw Will's name in blue.

Then she saw the last name on the list.

_Celia Slone?_

Something clicked in her head. "Is everyone on this list human?"

"Yes," he said quietly.

"What is it? A...a hit list?" She couldn't take the light from her own name. It was there, question mark and all, as if they weren't sure about her.

His hand closed around her wrist, and gently he drew down her arm. What little night vision she'd had was gone; he was just a shape, darkness on darkness. "I don't know exactly. I hadn't seen it before tonight either. My best guess from what Arch said is that it's a list of humans who can't be trusted. I know some of the names from my sister and – they're dangerous. They tried to hurt her. Arch...thought I should know that your name had appeared." He took a deep breath. "And I thought you should know."

It felt weird, as if she had suddenly stepped outside her body to see herself as others did.

"Do you think my name belongs on there?" she said, half-afraid of the answer. But it was Riose, her Riose, and she was hoping desperately that Aspen had been right.

"Never." The answer was swift and hard. "Cee...I messed up this morning. Everything came out wrong. I trust you with my life, and it doesn't matter to me that you're human. It never mattered."

She sighed. "Until now. Sure you can be friends with one of the damned?"

He swung the rucksack off his back. "No. Which is why I'm taking you off that list."

Out came rags and a bottle. As soon as he opened it, Celia recognised the caustic reek of paint stripper. Slightly agape, she stood aside as he attacked the wall with a ferocity that made her worry he might actually scour away the bricks.

"Does this count as vandalism?" she asked.

"Pretty sure it counts as a public service," muttered Riose. The rags were tossed into the bins. "Celia? I'm sorry."

Relief sang like a lark in her heart. She felt a little giddy, wrung out from too much emotion in too short a time. "Me too."

He glanced over and gave her that little crooked smile, barely a gleam in the shadows. But she didn't need the light; she knew that expression like a blind man knew a lover's face, knew it with eleven solid years of friendship. Nothing else needed to be said.

She felt the weight of unseen eyes as they left. And she wondered if one of them had put her name on a wall, had looked at her and seen something cursed, something dangerous. And for a moment, she felt it in herself: a twist of hot rage rising like lava in her stomach.

You named me your enemy, and so how can I be anything else?

Then it was gone; she was a girl shielded only from the claws of the beast by the boy beside her.

And if Riose isn't there one day? whispered a voice. If it's just you and the monsters, deep in the abyss?

She didn't want to answer that. In truth, she had no answer.

_If you're gone maybe it's time to come home  
There's an awful lot of breathing room, but I can hardly move  
If you're gone, baby, you need to come home  
There's a little bit of something - me - in everything in you__  
_

-o0o-

Thanks for reading! Thoughts adored :)


	5. Chapter 5

Many apologies that it has been a little while, but life got very exciting. I went to Malta, where my own personal love story played out and my very wonderful boyfriend proposed. (If any of you have my magpie tendencies, there's a pic of our ring on my writing LJ.) Also, there was buying of a house! So very busy, but not so busy that there was not still time to write ;)

Thank you so much for your lovely comments last time which have, as always, pointed me in a better direction! Thank you **emilythepan, Rebecca **(Thank you! I try to edit more ruthlessly these days, and it's definitely less florid. I'd love to write something of my own, but first I'd like to finish what I started!), **slstmaruadersjple, Elentiriel, ****Izzy **(You are pretty damn close on the shapeshifters :) It's essentially part of the origin story of the dragons, whereas witches and vampires came from a different path. I think Toya will make an appearance, but this story starts to run parallel to other events in Haloed which I will obviously not spoil here - and this becomes essentially, small fry to the Furies. ), **Lorraine Mclachl **(Thank you!), **mrinalini **and last but by no means least **Guest **(Thank you! They have a very different dynamic.)

Hope you enjoy :)

Lyrics from _Dustland Fairytale _by The Killers.

**Sundogs and Shadowplay**

V

_Now Cinderella, don't you go to sleep  
It's such a bitter form of refuge  
Why don't you know, the kingdom's under siege  
And everybody needs you_

The next morning, after two nights full of drama and empty of sleep, Celia narrowly convinced her mother that her red eyes were due to clumsy eyeliner application rather than midnight marauding. She fled the house before any more questions came, straight over the road to Sunny's.

The door was opened by Aurenna, who looked at her as like they'd never met. "Can I help you?"

"Hey, Ms Ravija," she said cheerfully. "Sunny around?"

"Have we met?" Her frown was ferocious. Those gold eyes bored into her like a hawk's.

Thrown, Celia managed, "Uh, yeah. When you moved in. Kurt – Mr Schrader - introduced us."

"I think I'd remember that," she flashed, voice acid-sharp.

She didn't know what to say.

"Aurenna," came Kurt's voice, but very gentle. "It happened."

He held up his hands as he came down the hall, as if he needed to show her that he was unarmed. From the way Aurenna bristled, he'd been right to. "Let me guess. More of these so-called memory problems I have?"

"More of those," he agreed. His weariness said that they had done this before. "Celia offered to show Sunny round. She's one of the neighbours."

"I know just what our neighbours are," snarled Aurenna. "They're fooling no one."

"Look at her," he commanded. "Stop being angry at me, and look! She's a teenage kid, that's all."

Aurenna's gaze swung back to her, and this time she looked – really looked, top to toe.

Confusion seeped into her eyes like mist. She pressed her trembling fingers to her temples. "I don't...I don't remember... Why can't I remember?"

"You will." He made a motion, as if he wanted to hold her but thought better of it. "Give it time, Renna."

"Don't call me that!"

He sighed. "My apologies. Again."

"It starts to ring hollow after a while," she bit back. "I think...I think I need to sleep. Celia. Nice to meet you." She pushed past Kurt, who flattened himself against the wall. Celia had never realised someone with so much physical presence could suddenly become so small, as if he wanted to shrivel into his own shadow.

The silence felt awful. So she said, "Mr Schrader...I have this feeling you're going to apologise. Please don't."

He looked at her, face as still and stern as a marble sculpture. Then he gave a flimsy smile and said, "Busted."

She wavered then spoke before she could bite back the words, "This is probably interfering. But it's kind of a genetic trait. Moving is really tough, and Sunny's mom seems like she's not too well, and you can probably find your own friends, but...but...do you play bridge?"

There was utter bemusement in his expression. "I used to."

"Great. Then you have no excuse. Some of our parents used to play, but there's only three of them who do right now, and I know they all miss it. You could partner my mom. I mean, you better be good enough to win, because she could give Napoleon a run for his money when it comes to strategy, but I bet they'd like you."

And Sunny seems kind of difficult, and Aurenna hates you, and I remember that time Billy and I were both horrible to my mom, and I caught her crying in the garden while she pulled out the weeds. Your eyes look like hers - _wounded_. The way you look when someone you love hurts you.

"I know they'd like you," she said more firmly. "I'll tell my mom to expect you tomorrow."

He had the sort of shellshocked look that was fairly familiar to anyone who'd just had their first taste of what Aspen called the Slone steamroller. "Thanks."

She shrugged. "No big deal. Um…is Sunny about?"

"She's doing something with her hair." His hand gestures suggested magic. Or curling. Probably curling, she concluded. "How was her first day?"

"Not...easy, I think," she ventured. His nod confirmed it. "But we'll look out for her."

Everyone is looking out for her, she thought. The boys in hope, the shapeshifters in fear, and me - well, I'm still deciding.

-o0o-

She wanted the walk in to be easier. Those hopes were dashed; the shapeshifters didn't bother to hide their reactions, or maybe they couldn't. Either way, she could only watch as people scattered before them.

Sunny wasn't talking, again, so in desperation, Celia resorted to a run-down on everyone she'd met yesterday.

"...Mike's been made quarterback this year, which has only inflated his ego even more. He's the kind of guy who thinks that your lips are saying no but your eyes are saying yes. If your fists can also say no, and say it directly to his balls, that should do the trick. It worked for Ness, anyway, but that was before she was dating Arch. I don't think you've met him..."

She spotted Arch by the store.

"That's him – the tall guy with the red T-shirt. Hey, Arch!" She waved at him.

He looked up, the smile on his lips fading as he saw Sunny beside her.

"Fancy some company?" she said, praying he'd be the exception to the rule.

"Uh...not today. I...need to go," he said, and crossed the road with such abruptness that it couldn't be anything but deliberate.

She struggled to know what to say. "Guess he's in a hurry."

Sunny's gaze was concentrated on the ground. "Who cares?"

You do, she thought.

Oh, Sunny was very good at hiding it, but Celia had grown up with Riose and all his miniscule subtleties. The evidence was there: the little flinches, the drop of her gaze as another one turned away, fingers clenching in her long necklace until the chain dug into her neck.

She hesitated. What she wanted to do wasn't smart, given the graffiti. But she'd stood by Sunny yesterday, watching as each rejection chipped away at her. And it struck her how easily they ostracised her – without trying to know, without wanting to know. No wonder it hurt.

Sunny said nothing, of course, but that made it worse. It meant she didn't think anyone cared.

"Why do they do that?" she half-growled, glaring at Arch's departing back.

Sunny's voice was soft, small. "Who?"

"The shapeshifters."

Pure shock on her face, lips parted, utterly human in that moment. "Who told you that?" she hissed.

"I grew up here. My best friend was a shapeshifter. Now she's just an oracle, only she doesn't do prophecies. When I was six, Riose got all fangy over my mom's steak tartare. And as for Finn and puberty...let's just say all of us got really good with a fire extinguisher."

"And they let you remember?" she choked, incredulous.

She supposed one large advantage of people fleeing before you was that no one could hear what Sunny was saying. "Let me? What do you think I am, a pet dog?"

"In our world? Yes." Something glimmered in Sunny's eyes – the churning heat of magma, like a glimpse into some boiling hell, and Celia had to force herself not to step back. "A child could wrap your mind around their little finger."

She heard the ghost of her mother during one of her impromptu self-defence lessons, saying _It's all right to be afraid, Celia. But don't show it. As soon as it's over, whatever it is, you have my permission to be a screeching, liquefied mess if that's what you need. But in the moment, be bold. It might just make the difference._

Be bold, she thought and stared into those inhuman eyes, breathing in, breathing out.

"I might surprise you," she said calmly.

There was a touch on her arm – Riose was there, and he stepped between them like Sunny didn't exist, his gaze intent. "Are you okay?"

"Of course. I have the Slone knee in reserve, remember?"

"Vividly," he said with feeling.

"You." Sunny's voice was low, vibrating. "You told her. Are you that naïve? Or just stupid?"

His eyes were like blue-green chips of glacial ice. "Neither."

"Both, clearly! Do you have any idea what you've done? You bring humans into our world and they get hurt." She shook her head. "You could get her killed."

"Not me," said Celia, angry now. "I'm careful. We're careful."

Sunny scoffed. "And you're never afraid."

"Of course I'm afraid!" She thrust her hand up, with the crooked little finger. "Wolves did this." She turned her wrist to reveal the shiny crescent burn mark. "Finn did that. He didn't mean to, but it hurt. Phi nearly drowned me when I was seven, because no one told her that humans can't hold their breath underwater like the mer. Sometimes, they scare me. But so do rollercoasters. So does knowing that one day my mom will die, like Phi's mom did, and I'll have to cope with it somehow. Guess what? Life is scary. You can cower in the corner, or you can face it down and hope that the monsters in the dark might be on your side."

She took a deep breath, blood and rage pounding through her.

"They've always been on my side," she said. "And I'm on theirs, too. It might not mean much-"

"It means everything," said Riose, and for one strange moment, their eyes locked and the world shrunk down to him and her, still in the midst of the wild world. "You're...ours, Cee. You're family."

She smiled, and her anger melted like ice under sunlight.

"Family?" There was a strangled note in Sunny's voice. "Her?"

"Her."

Riose took a step closer to Sunny, threat looming large in his every move.

"And don't you dare try to change that," he said softly.

The anguish on Sunny's face was raw. "That's not who I am. She knows, and it's too late to change it. And you...you can't even see the danger you've put her in. God, you are _blind_."

"And what am I supposed to do?" bit out Riose. "Erase her memory, again and again? Do you know what that does to someone?"

Sunny reeled back from him as if he had hit her, and suddenly Celia understood – the pieces came together like a mosaic, but it was no pretty picture.

"She knows, Ri," she murmured, laying a hand on his arm. "She knows exactly what it does."

Sunny was crumbling in front of them and trying desperately not to, her eyes too bright, the heat rolling off her almost unbearable.

Grimacing as the hot air hit her, Celia stepped between them. It was like being in a sauna where someone kept tossing heat onto the coals – thick, suffocating, as if she inhaled cotton wool. The inches felt like miles, but she didn't stop because if she turned away, she proved everything Sunny thought was right.

Eyes itching, skin prickling, she reached out.

"Celia!" she heard Riose say, and the heat seared up around her until her vision swam.

She had never fainted in her life, and she wasn't about to start. Celia took that last step, and she grabbed for Sunny's hands, and squeezed, hard. Pain burned in her fingers, but she hung on.

"I'm so sorry," she told her, thinking of Kurt shrinking back in the corridor, of Aurenna's dazed eyes as she rubbed her temples. And of Sunny on that first day, looking at the distance between them like she didn't understand it. "No one deserves that."

Spots danced at the periphery of her vision – her knees buckled, and then a great wave of fresh air dashed against her like icy water. She heard a noise – a sob, half-swallowed back.

"It was my fault," said Sunny, her voice crackling. Her fingers were like a vice, utter anguish in her eyes. "It's my fault she can't remember. She did it for me. And I didn't stop her because I was so angry – because they'd left me there for six years, and I didn't think they cared...I should have stopped her!" A shuddering gasp wracked her. "I should have stayed!"

And she dissolved into tears – head bowed, hiding behind that widow's veil of black hair as if she couldn't bear for them to see her cry.

Celia glanced over. Riose wore a _what do we do_ look, which given that his usual response to tears was the sort of cartoon exit that left nothing but a cloud of dust, meant he thought it was serious.

Her hands were smarting but unharmed, and with only a little trepidation, Celia went in for the hug. Sunny folded into her, and Celia said quietly, "It wasn't your fault."

She didn't understand, but that bit, she felt was true. Six years...whatever had happened, Sunny had been a kid.

"I should have stayed," insisted Sunny. Her voice was weary, but controlled again. She straightened, wiping at her eyes. Celia didn't have the heart to tell her that her eyeliner had been obliterated.

"Stayed where?" Riose asked.

She took a deep, rattling breath. Her gaze flicked between them, deciding. She was a mess, red-eyed and blotchy – and Celia liked her far more than her polished façade. "The hollow place."

Riose swore viciously. "No. You weren't there. No one goes there and lives."

"I know." Such sadness. She pulled at the hem of her top – lifted it to bare a jagged pink scar in her stomach. And she turned, so they could see the matching wound on her back. "Me included."

The three of them stood in silence. Then Celia ventured, "What's the hollow place?"

"It's the demon realm," said Riose. He watched Sunny with something close to anxiety.

"So you're a d-"

Riose coughed; a mother was strolling along with her pushchair.

"-eep-sea diver," finished Celia wildly. "What does that mean, exactly?"

Both of them looked at her. The woman gave them a baffled glance as she passed.

Sunny sighed. "I don't know yet myself."

"No one does," offered Riose. It was as close as he'd get to sympathy. "Except it probably isn't much fun."

"No. And I shouldn't have told you," muttered Sunny. "I lost it."

"Yeah," said Riose dryly. "It's weird how that happens to all of us 'round Cee. It's like she cares about who you are, not what you are, or something." Sunny looked at him, a little startled. He shrugged. "I didn't plan to tell her either. But this werewolf pushed me over in the playground, and Celia called him a bully and kicked him, he grazed his knee, I smelled blood and before I could hide it, fangs ahoy."

The starts of a smile were on Sunny's lips. "I can understand that. Celia – I...didn't mean to scare you. It's just – our world is dangerous." Her fingers touched her top, over where that scar was. "I found that out the hard way. I don't want you to go through that. I remember what it was like being human in their world."

"Hard," she admitted. "A little frightening." She glanced at Riose, and smiled. "And incredible. Fun. Kind of weird."

"Are you taking about me or the Nightworld?"

"Yes."

He gave her a reproachful look. "We need to make tracks or we'll be late."

School. She'd forgotten. "Wait – Sunny, your make-up's all over the place..."

Alarmed, Sunny turned to examine her reflection in the glass of a shop window. "I can't go in like this!"

Demon or human, there were some things that were universal, and keeping up your image in high school was one of them.

Digging in her bag, Sunny waved them off with her free hand. "You guys go on, I can pretend I got lost. New girl perk." She hesitated, then turned. "I...I've never had any friends except Kurt and Aurenna. And maybe Blue."

Beside her, Riose made a noise like a chainsaw revving up that Celia took for extreme shock.

"I always imagined if I had friends, they'd be kind of like you." Her essential Sunniness reasserted itself. "I mean, cooler, but like you."

-o0o-

"There's more graffiti," was Finn's greeting as Celia swung into the desk next to him for British Literature, a little breathless from sprinting the last couple of streets. Riose hadn't even broken a sweat, damn him. "Not words this time."

She fanned herself. "Do tell."

"They got the canteen. The wall's covered in this weird symbol." He sketched out two concentric circles overlaid by an inverted V. Celia recognised it straight away. "People are freaked." A telling pause. "Most people, anyway."

Her ears pricked. "Who isn't freaked?"

"Mike Stanislov. His little crew. I think he knows. He made this – this comment at Ness. 'We all know what five letter word describes you. Ends in -itch.'"

She grimaced. Mike could be a nasty piece of work when he wanted. Never to her, mostly because they avoided each other, but she'd overheard some of his comments. Hard not to when his volume was perpetually amped to eleven. "Could be a different word, Finn. Either way, he's a jerk."

"She didn't think so. Neither do I. I told him he was uninvited from Friday. Him and all his gang."

"He'll try and crash it anyway." Celia saw his eyelashes drop, faux-coy over the sly curve of a smile. "You have a plan."

"Of course I have a plan."

"Do you need my help?"

"Not so much need as want." He cocked a finger at her. "My place, tomorrow night. Help me design the scorched earth policy."

"Cryptic. I'm in," she proclaimed.

Sunny slid in right on the bell with the gossip girls. She tipped Celia a little salute before they settled at the back, giggling and chattering. Around them, shapeshifters squirmed in their seats, and Finn suddenly kept dropping pens. It was going to be a long day.

-o0o-

Celia shut her locker, and turned to head to her next class.

She hit Mike Stanislov's chest instead. The impact staggered her – Mike and a brick wall had a lot in common. "Sorry," she muttered automatically and stepped sideways.

Mike stepped with her.

"Sorry," she repeated, a little frustrated, and moved the other way.

He was there again.

So that was the game he was playing. Narrow-eyed, Celia stared at him. "Did you want something, Mike?"

"A word or two," he said in that great bass growl. It was the sort of voice you'd expect on the wide-shouldered, muscled slab of a guy Mike was. Past six foot, and very good at burying opposition six foot under, she either had to crane her neck to glare at him or aim her best 'drop dead' look at his chest.

Celia went for craning. A little neck strain was worth it to get her point across. The hall was emptying around them. The last few stragglers were drifting out – and Mike was clearly waiting for just that.

A door closed. Silence. Those sleet-grey eyes were drinking her in, and Celia had the feeling she was being measured in some way.

"The world's changing, Slone. Things are going to be different. Question is, are you going to stay the same?"

She stared back, refusing to show anything on her face. "Mike, I haven't got a clue what you're blathering on about."

One side of his mouth hooked up in a not-quite smile. "See, everyone else buys that line of bullshit. They hear about this thing with you and Ratner and they think that maybe you're just naïve. Maybe you got fooled, same as the rest of us. They think you'll see the truth and run screaming."

"What truth?" she said sharply. Her mind was going a million miles a minute.

"Nice. Very believable." He took a step closer; and she edged back until she felt metal against her shoulder blades. His hands crashed onto the lockers, his body suddenly a cage that she quivered in. Mike leaned in, breath damp and hot as he said into her ear, "Maybe they're right about you."

"Stop talking in riddles!" she snapped, shriller than she wanted to be.

He chuckled. "The world isn't what you think it is, Slone. There's us and there's them. They run it all. They have power, and they think they have all of it. They think we're cattle, and they've used us. But now we have their secrets. The uprising's coming, and you can rise with us or fall with them. And I'm telling you now, it's a hell of a long way to the bottom. Time to choose, Slone. Time to-"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" came a voice.

To her immense relief, Will was striding down the corridor.

Mike drew back at once, his face the picture of easy amiability as Celia sagged against the lockers. "Having a little chat, Ratner. Not sure why that's any of your business."

"It's my business when you make my lab partner late. I like my GPA how it is."

Mike sneered. "You need to get your priorities straight." He glanced at Celia, a quick cut of his eyes. "So do you, sweetheart. Remember what I said. Clock's ticking."

He was gone then, whistling a song off-key that hung in her memory long after he was out of sight.

"Jerk," she said, and found herself in tandem with Will.

"Let me guess," said Will grimly. "Mike propositioned you."

Caught off-guard, but unwilling to pass up a good excuse, Celia said, "How did you know?"

Will glared at his departing back. "He thinks I have you, so he wants you. Same as always. Sorry you had to put up with that."

"I thought he was your friend."

"Not anymore. His dad and mine work together. They both went for a promotion and my dad got picked. Mike got bitter. Now everything's this dumb competition." Like a dog shivering off the rain, Will shook himself. "Not that you're a prize. I mean, clearly you're not like, the wooden spoon, you'd definitely be silverware-" He saw her face. "I'm going to stop now."

"I think that's best," she said gravely, then at his stricken expression, let a smile sneak out. "And for the record, screw the silverware. I'm pure diamond, and don't you forget it."

He laughed, and that wiped the last of the tension from the air. "Then we'd better get back to the lab so you can shine."

-o0o-

There was something in the air. Not the kind of something that would have made Phil Collins strike up a tune, either. Sunny breathed shallowly as she followed Leanne Ducharme through the greyish haze which shimmered like petrol fumes. She was all too familiar with the sour, gritty taste of the emotion it represented.

So much hate. It had been there yesterday, too, but not as thick.

The school was a riot of sensation. She had to stay vigilant. Something innocuous – a scribbled note in a textbook, a combination lock – could explode on her like a grenade. Like the graffiti in Celia's locker, slopped on in a snarling mist of rage and disgust and glee.

"Oh wow," said Leanne, wobbling to a halt like a newborn gazelle. Sunny peered over her shoulder into the canteen. "That's _bold_."

Her skin crawled. The symbol stretched from floor to ceiling, yellow as buttercups to everyone else. But through demon eyes, the air in front of it rippled and churned like the pulsing of a jellyfish. Emotion so visceral it lived, hungered, devoured.

"Yeah," she echoed through dry lips.

And they were sat right in front of it. Of course. She wanted to run away, but that wasn't the deal. Stay safe, blend in, be normal. And the gossip girls were about as normal as it got.

"Are you okay?" asked Leanne halfway through the lunch line, her brown eyes confused. "You've been quiet."

"A little creeped out, I guess," she admitted.

"Is someone bothering you?" squeaked Leanne indignantly. "Is it Lewis? I can make him stop."

She shook her head, navigating the tables. It felt different, the chatter muted. "To be honest, the graffiti's kind of out there."

"Oh, that." Leanne flapped a hand and nearly lost her tray to gravity. "It's not aimed at _you._"

Suddenly she didn't seem so funny, tottering around on her stilettos, squeaking and squawking at every little thing. "Who's it aimed at?"

"You'd know if it was you," said Leanne primly. She settled her tray at the table, next to Mike. "If you were one of them."

Sunny didn't miss the warning look Mike shot her.

"That's what I heard, anyway," added Leanne hastily.

Sunny braced herself as Mike flashed an enormous smile. "Hey, beautiful. Saved you a space."

"I'll never fit there," she said brightly and put Leanne between them before he could protest. "Hey, where's Ness?"

She used her most innocent voice, the blithe newcomer who knew nothing, kept her eyes lowered to her lunch. She didn't need to see, after all, to feel the wash of emotion; anger, loathing – and shame, brief and light as a bubble bursting.

"She's out," said Kirsty around a mouthful of hamburger. Her meaning was clear.

"Oh," said Sunny vaguely. "She seemed nice."

"She seemed a lot of things. Turns out she's not any of them. And we don't like liars." Kirsty's smile had a brittle edge. "Or drama."

"Know what we do like?" said Mike, leaning over Leanne as if she wasn't there. He was far too close, and Sunny could feel confidence emanating from him like radioactive waves. Maybe that was unfair.

After all, radiation had its uses.

"Pina coladas?" she offered. "Getting caught in the rain?"

His expression went blank. Not everyone had spent their formative years exposed to Aurenna's taste in music. "You, princess. And I have got one hell of a throne for you." He patted his lap, his grin growing.

Sunny stared him down. "No."

His smile didn't fade. "Just kidding. So what brought you to Ryars Valley?"

Uncomfortable truth was probably the quickest way to curtail this one. "My mom's not well. She was in an accident and it's damaged her memory. She doesn't remember my dad."

His face creased into something gentler, an expression she wouldn't have expected. "Sorry to hear that. That's tough." He hesitated. "They think she'll recover?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. Even if she remembers, the doctors said she won't be the same." Her heart twisted; she didn't want to feel this, now. "She's already different."

Mike nodded slowly. His voice was unusually quiet. "Yeah, I know that one. My mom's got MS, the progressive kind. The day my dad had to get her the wheelchair, she cried all day. You don't – you don't want to see your mom cry, you know?"

He glanced up, and there was a sudden vulnerability in his eyes. She knew it: she recognised it. It didn't matter if you were unstoppable on a football field, if you were a demon who could spin the world on her finger like a basketball – when someone you loved was damaged, irreparably, irrevocably, you were powerless.

"Mike, you're bringing us all down," announced Kirsty, flicking a piece of sesame bun at him. "I've seen your mom in that chair. She corners like a Nascar driver. Quit playing Sunny for sympathy."

He roused a grin, and it chased the ghosts from his eyes. For a moment, she felt his sorrow – then it was gone as if it had never been, and she was left confused. "Am I that obvious?"

"Like a brick to the face," said Kirsty.

He leaned back, hands hooked behind his head. "Actually there's one difference. You can always see me coming."

Despite herself, Sunny laughed. For a few moments, she was exactly what she aspired to be: safe, normal, invisible.

-o0o-

Mike's words stayed with Celia all day. She watched the thermometer creep up in science, and thought _you can rise with us_. In her history class, while the teacher talked about the Iron Curtain crumbling, she heard _you can fall with them._ Suddenly, she saw everyone through new eyes – through his eyes, splitting them into _us, _into _them. _

He knew, surely. He had to. There was a sort of swagger to him and his cronies at lunch as they sat in the vandalised cafeteria in front of that symbol. Will was sat with him, about as far away as he could be in his crowd of friends, disapproval in his face. The gossip girls were there too, with Sunny looking uneasy in their midst.

She, at least, was safe. Mike was flirting relentlessly with her, and Sunny looked somewhere between horrified and amused. Right now, Celia thought that was better than the way he looked at Ness, sat on her own in a corner looking teary. There was something cruel and glittering in Mike's eyes, like a hawk hovering over a plump mouse.

Ness didn't look like herself, bowed under an invisible weight. Her friends didn't even look her way, this golden girl they'd orbited for as long as Celia could remember. You never saw Ness without her girls.

Now she was so completely alone. And maybe that should have felt fair, after the bitchy comments, the jokes that weren't, the unthinking arrogance of someone beautiful and beloved. But it just felt – sad.

_It's a hell of a long way to the bottom._

She looked away – into Mike's eyes, flat a shark's. He tapped his wrist. It was obvious what he meant. Ness was the prelude, the warning, the first shadowy glimpse of the future.

Tick-tock.

_I saw the devil wrapping up his hands  
He's getting ready for the showdown  
I saw the ending when they turned the page  
I threw my money and I ran away  
Straight to the valley of the great divide  
Out where the dreams all hide  
Out where the wind don't blow  
Out here, the good girls die_

-o0o-

Many thanks for reading - comments adored!


	6. Chapter 6

Lyrics from _The Hunted _by Snow Ghosts.

**Sundogs &amp; Shadowplay**

VI

_You wandered through the willows  
__In the forest you were found  
__Trying to hide your footprints in the ground  
__It's not so wise, if you try to run  
__It's not so wise, you know I've won, you know I've won_

Celia dreamed of the wild wood, brimful of gloom and ghosts.

Not again. Not now.

Roots snaked across the ground like a nest of vipers, while above her leaves blocked out air and sunlight alike. She was dragged through it unceremoniously, losing her footing time and again. No sound but her breath disturbed this noiseless, green-grey world.

She knew it was not real – but it had been, once. And like then, she was helpless, flanked by a pair of werewolves. They had a grip on her just shy of pain.

"Where are we going?" she demanded.

A cuff to the side of her head left her ears ringing. She staggered and fell, all sense of up or down obliterated. When her vision cleared, she was staring at the ground, which trembled. No, she trembled, angry at her own vulnerability.

I don't want this! she cried out, fighting the dream. Once was enough. Why do I have to live it over and over?

A shadow fell over her and she looked up into green eyes, alien eyes, wolf eyes. "Prey doesn't talk," the boy said. "And that's all you are."

She had not known enough to be silent. "It's not even part of what I am," she shot back. "Where are we going?"

He'd smiled lazily. As he leaned in and sniffed, rubbing her hair between his fingertips, Celia flinched back. But she couldn't evade his voice, rich and throaty and full of something very like hunger. "Not afraid. Not even under your skin." He'd inhaled again. "And so sweet. When this is done, I'll hunt you. I'll have you. You'll smell like all the rest when I'm done, fear and blood. And I'll break you."

He drew back, his smile replaced by the emptiness opening in his eyes like a crevasse. There was excitement thrumming in his words, which was almost worse.

"_That's_ where we're going."

For once, Celia was glad to see Don Ivan, sauntering into the clearing like he always did, because it meant that bit of the dream was done.

Only he didn't. She willed the dream to carry on – she wanted it over, but instead, the wolf bared his teeth in a slow grimace. It seemed that his face was longer and more gaunt than she remembered, an oval of skin around a vast, notched maw that was ivory teeth and bristling darkness.

This wasn't how it went.

Contorted as an evening shadow, he filled her vision. She scuttled backwards through the cage of trees. His voice was all animal. "Run, _human_."

And she did, feet fumbling, hands clawing for anything she could use to get further from him. She tore through the wild wood, which curved and churned like a labyrinth in motion. Though her muscles were burning, she was not quick enough – could not be quick enough.

Behind her, a howl vibrated on the air. As if in answer, goosebumps prickled her skin, and suddenly it was hard to breathe, hard to be anything but a panicking small creature scrabbling for life against all hope.

Wake up! she screamed at herself. Wake up, it's just a dream!

Celia didn't look back. She tried again to wake, but every stumble was enough to jar her concentration. And ever-closer, ever-louder came the sounds of pursuit.

She couldn't escape by running. And she couldn't wake unless she was stood still.

No, whispered that frightened animal part.

Yes, she answered, sick to her stomach, but all human. Yes, this is how it has to be. This is not real – I won't let it be real.

And she stopped. She breathed in, and it hit her: there was no scent. She knew the smell of woods, wet soil and crushed grass and leaves, and this one smelt of nothing. She was in bed, at home, trapped nowhere more sinister than her own head.

Around her, the world wobbled, like the view through a rain-covered window. For a moment, she felt the marshmallow softness of her pillow-

A snarl snapped her fragile hold on reality.

Before her was a monstrosity – neither wolf nor man, but a patchwork nightmare of the two. Skin and fur rippled over his body, which was too tall, oddly-jointed. His jaw dangled, dripping white foam. And he was naked. Very obviously naked.

Its mouth reformed into a gaping grin. "Too slow," it said in a garbled voice. "Like all the others, slow and weak. Nothing but prey for anyone who wants you." It sniggered. "Like me."

It stepped forward. Time to go.

She closed her eyes on it, ignoring the fear. She was at home. She was in bed, warm and safe. At the edge of her senses, she felt reality like the clingy gossamer of a cobweb.

Claws closed on her arms. She didn't baulk. She didn't dare. She did not listen to the things it slurred in her ear, because she could feel the weight of the blankets on her body, clenched in her fingers. Only dimly did she see jaws part above her throat, hardly felt the spittle flecking her.

There! For an instant, she was in two worlds, her vision filled with a terrible flash of teeth and darkness, and pain, oh god, pain-

She woke with a strangled cry, staring into nothing. She was beaded with sweat, her heart thundering. That last image played in her mind – she had felt the teeth crunch into her throat, felt her own body limp and fading.

Arms wrapped around her knees, Celia stayed huddled for a long time, waiting for dawn. There in the dark, in the strange hollow time when she knew everyone human was asleep, she had never felt more alone.

_Nothing but prey for anyone who wants you._

It was so close to what Riose had said. And it felt like truth.

-o0o-

Screeching a word that made Kurt shake his head ruefully, Sunny hit the floor in the basement.

She took Kurt's hand as he hauled her up. "Well, he's right," remarked her father. "Your balance is off."

"All right," she conceded grudgingly. "Maybe he does know what he's talking about."

"Of course he does. I trained him." Kurt took an easy stance, staff raised. It was textbook perfect. "Again."

"You're just going to thump me," she grumbled, but mirrored him.

"Only if you let me," he pointed out. "Better day at school?"

"Sort of."

They traded a flurry of blows, none of them more than warm up. All through, Kurt kept up a quiet stream of feedback. He paused to let her correct her footwork. "Making friends?"

"I think so," she muttered. "Some of them don't like each other."

"Sounds about right," he said casually.

"Really?" She blocked the barrage that rattled her defence from every direction. What she'd felt at the school had seemed intense. Very intense. But perhaps it was always that way. She'd been human before, guessing at the emotions boiling in people. Maybe this was the new normal: a world that blazed like the northern lights, but held no heat. Maybe she was overreacting to it all.

"Plenty of people don't get on." Sadness billowed from him like a solar flare before he reeled it in. It never even showed in his expression, but she knew who he was thinking of. "Me and Malefici, for example."

"You don't hate him, though."

A rare break in his guard – she swung in and clobbered him on the knee. Kurt doubled over and held up a hand for mercy.

"What makes you think that?" he said, voice muffled. She wanted to see his face; there was a note there that unnerved her.

"You could have betrayed him, if you wanted, when Herod came. You could have taken me and run, and he'd be dead. Or wishing he was, anyway. That's what someone who hated him would do." She shrugged. "I know you don't like him. I think he likes you."

"That is not the high accolade you make it sound," he said straightening. "Very perceptive, sunshine. No, I don't hate him. I did, for a while. It's kind of a rite of passage if you work for Nightfire."

"Can...can you show me how it felt?" she asked.

He gave her a long look. "Why?"

"I feel things – I see things, and I don't know if they're normal. I need a – a –"

Kurt smiled faintly. "A barometer?"

"Yes. That."

He sighed. And behind him, emotion unfurled like ragged wings, dark and greasy and vast. With one tentative finger, she reached past his shoulder and brushed the edge of hatred.

Light bled out of the world, leaving it dim and dangerous, as if every surface had an edge to slice her open. And in it, she was reduced to a rage so primal it existed only in pieces: in the grim drumbeat of her heart, the bite of her fingernails in her clenched fists. The air felt tight, or perhaps that was the anger too big to be contained in something as small as her skin. She wanted to move, to fight, to tear and rend and destroy – wanted vengeance with a hunger that consumed her. She-

"Enough, I think."

Her vision cleared. Sunny breathed in shakily, and it was like surfacing from the depths of the ocean into pure clean air.

"How could you feel all that and let him live?" she blurted.

"I needed it, for a time. It stopped me feeling other things." He was thinking of his son, she knew, who had been culled to prove a point to someone. "There are plenty of reasons to hate Malefici. But not the reasons I was holding onto. He didn't kill Johann. I doubt he gave my son even a passing thought. What he did do was perpetuate a world where lives could be nothing more than the punctuation on someone's pithy point."

He spread his hands.

"But as Aurenna said, so had I. I trained him, and I knew what he was, and I did nothing. Hate blinded me then, but worse, I had blinded myself when I let Bane Malefici walk out into the world without even trying to make him someone better."

He looked at her, and he said quietly, "I have tried not to be so blind twice. I failed you too, sunshine."

She didn't know what to say. So instead, she hit him in the stomach.

"Why?" he groaned from near the floor.

"What sort of parent do you think you are?" she demanded, hiding her rough voice under volume. "I'm supposed to be the one who disappoints you, not the other way around! And last time I checked, no one made me fall on my sword. Literally, at that. You don't get to be sad all over what was definitely my crowning moment of glory. If anyone has a monopoly on angst, it's me."

He sounded like he was laughing around the agony. "I yield."

"Good," she said smugly.

"And that was underhanded," he added. "The car needs washing. Consider it your job."

She debated complaining. But there was something...normal about chores. "Deal."

-o0o-

Three days without uninterrupted sleep was three too many. Celia drowned the worst of it with her mother's black coffee, spooning in enough sugar to take away the bitterness. Nothing could take away the lingering memories of her dream.

Luckily, Sunny wasn't feeling chatty either, so they got to school in sleepy silence.

The day didn't get any better from there. She was so hazy that lessons blurred into one another like episodes of a soap opera. When the lunch-bell went, at least it meant the day was half over.

She was shuffling her stuff from bag to locker when an arm looped around her waist. She turned-

And all she saw was a misshapen _thing_, lips skinned back over dull greying fangs, hooked claws reaching for her.

Books avalanched to the ground as she threw up her arms, the fear biting into her muscles.

"Cee?"

She blinked – and it was Jo in front of her, hurt radiating in the soft sound of her name. It was just Jo. People were staring, and Jo looked as if she'd been slapped.

"I'm sorry," she said shakily. "I thought you were..."

"It's pretty obvious what you thought." Those quick hard words didn't quite cover the quiver in her voice. "I get it."

"No, you really don't." She caught Jo's hand as the wildcat turned away. "You surprised me, that was what I meant."

Those green eyes hardly seemed to see her. "Darling," she said softly, sliding from Celia's grasp like she was smoke. "Never lie to someone who can smell fear."

And she was swept away into the lunchtime crowd before Celia could even try to explain. Yes, she was afraid: yes, of a shapeshifter. But no, not you. Never you.

She stooped to collect her books, which were scattered like confetti on the floor.

"What was that?" said Riose's quiet voice. She closed her locker door to reveal him. For a moment, his face shimmered weirdly, but she bit her cheek and her vision cleared. "You looked – scared."

"It sounds nuts," she muttered.

He raised an eyebrow. "You're forgetting that I've had five years of Finn's harebrained schemes to find love. Or the closest thing that involves bodily fluids. I can take a lot of crazy."

She laughed tiredly. "I had this – this dream last night. A bad dream. An old one." She kept her voice low. He leant in, and she did the same, the pair of them slouched against the lockers like it was a normal day and a normal conversation. "About the night when the wolves took me."

He didn't move, exactly, but there was a new tautness to his body. "You dream about it a lot."

It was no question.

"When I'm stressed out, or I'm angry or sometimes – I don't know, just because. It's a thing that happened and I live with it. Normally, it's ok. I relive it, it ends, I wake up glad to be alive."

He gave a slow nod. "I have a few of those memories too."

"But last night it was different. The dream went wrong, and I wound up being hunted by a monster wolf. I knew I was dreaming but I couldn't wake up."

"So how did you?"

"I...stopped running. I stopped acting as if it was real and just forced myself to wake up." She swallowed. Even here, in the last flush of autumn sunlight, it felt too real. "I let him catch me. I woke up right as he bit down."

He inhaled sharply. Sudden, dangerous fire flashed in his turquoise eyes.

"When Jo grabbed me, for a moment, she had his face. I just reacted."

"She had his face," he repeated.

"Yeah. Lack of sleep and nightmares equals fun hallucinations that will absolutely win friends and influence people."

"Maybe." He shifted, frowning. "Mike Stanislov wasn't nearby, was he?"

It clicked. "Didn't see him, but...you think he's up to no good?"

"I know he's up to no good. I just can't prove it. And you've managed sixteen years without screaming at the sight of us. It could be coincidence, I guess. But it feels like design."

She heard Mike's words: _now we have their secrets_.

"If it is him, can I stop it?"

He reached out as if to brush her cheek then drew back, something hesitant in his expression, something entirely unlike Riose. "I can teach you some things that might help. But...the easiest way to teach you is from inside your thoughts. It can be quite intimate."

"Ri, if my choices are intimacy with you, or with the creepy nightmare wolf who wants to eat me, you are hands down the winner."

His smile gleamed, lopsided and a little wry. "Well, a win by default is still a win."

-o0o-

Ness was alone again at lunch. And in every lesson after. She sat as far as she could from the gossip girls, who did what they were so devastatingly good at. The snide comment, not quite soft enough to be inaudible, the burst of laughter like gunfire, the flick of a sneering glance; those were the weapons Ness had given them, and now they were aimed at her.

Celia didn't like it.

And she didn't know what to do. So she did nothing, and felt uneasy about it while Mike watched her.

"Celia!" Will caught up to her at the end of the day, his smile a little more tentative than usual. "We still on for tomorrow?"

"Of course," she said, trying to shake off her morose mood. "I'll even wear make-up."

"Damn it, that was my line." A pause. "Are you okay? I was kind of expecting a laugh, even a pity one. Mostly a pity one, in fact."

She dredged up a smile. "Yeah – just crazy sleep-deprived."

"Anything I can do ?" he offered, then reconsidered. "In a normal way, not a 'does this smell like chloroform to you' way."

"No, but thanks."

"Not a problem. At least if you fall asleep on me tomorrow, it's not about the quality of my conversation. What time should I head over?"

Oh god. "Depends. How do you feel about the Spanish Inquisition?"

"You mean your mom?" At her surprise, he gave her a very wry look. "At least I'll expect her. After Jordan and the STD spelling bee, word got out. The correctly spelled word, at that. I'm ready. I have helicopter parents too."

"She's not a helicopter parent. She's a Black Hawk parent." She shamelessly stole Finn's joke. "Cool, kind of scary, and armed to the teeth. Come by at seven and see for yourself." A thought struck her. "Wait, does this mean I'm going to get an interrogation of my own at some point?"

"Hopefully," he said, the devil dancing in his eyes. "See you tomorrow."

As he left, there was a swing in his step. And she felt lighter too, because he was cute and funny, and she had the feeling he might even impress her mother.

Before she left, Celia slipped into the bathroom to check her reflection. Her lipstain hadn't survived. As she was finishing repairs, she heard the heavy clunk of the door.

Then someone's body collided with her, hard.

"Hey, there's enough space for everyone!" she snapped and glanced sideways.

Kirsty was there, with a chronic case of resting bitch face. "There's not enough space for _you_."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Means you need to stop trying to drag Will down with you." She flicked her plait behind her shoulder, and Celia recognised that gesture from too many hockey practices. It meant trouble. "You've spent the last ten years slumming it with the subhumans, and now the tables have turned, you want out. Well, you don't get to escape by using Will as your meal ticket."

"Are you and Mike taking the same brand of crazy pills?" she said, incredulous. She went to leave – and Kirsty blocked her. "I'm not doing this with you."

The shove sent her lurching into the unyielding edge of the sink, knocking the air clean out of her stomach.

"You don't get a choice about what you do," said Kirsty, her voice level and hard. Celia glimpsed her own stunned face in the mirror before she was yanked back up. The strap of her bag went painfully taut on her shoulder. "You lost that privilege."

She whipped to face Kirsty, hauling her bag back. "You need to leave me alone and take your delusions somewhere else."

Kirsty sneered. "Will's ours. You don't get to seduce him."

"Will makes his own decisions. Now are you going to get out of my way?" Let the answer be yes, she thought.

"Are you going to keep away from Will?"

Celia met her eyes, the anger growing with the ache in her side. "No."

Kirsty shook her head, mock-sad. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"What's that supposed to-" This time Celia saw the slap coming and darted back. "You have got to be kidding me."

"No joke, _vamp tramp_," spat Kirsty with loathing that seared into Celia like an ice-burn. She recalled Sunny's face when she'd touched the graffiti, that too-familiar expression – it belonged to Kirsty. She'd seen it aimed at the other side in the middle of heated hockey games, before those vicious fouls and dangerous cannonball shots. "Drop him, or I'll drop you."

Somehow, that steadied her. There was only one way out of this, and so Celia squared her shoulders. Her bag slid into the corner. Yes, she really was going to have a punch-up in the girls' bathroom.

She met those sleet-grey eyes and flashed her best condescending smile, and said, "Try me."

Then it got messy.

-o0o-

The silence was glacial: slow, cold, and capable of lasting an age. Nothing interrupted it but the angry sounds of her mother getting in the car. The seatbelt's click, the door very pointedly not being slammed, the tick of the indicator as she pulled away.

"Well?"

Celia blinked and looked at her mother. "Huh?"

Jodie Slone didn't take her eyes from the road. "I was called out of work to find out my daughter has received a one-day suspension for brawling. While I enjoyed hearing the principal lambast the pair of you about the code of conduct and damage to school property, and I certainly appreciated his implicit condemnation of my parenting and your manners, I can't help but notice you were suspiciously silent on one key subject. How did it start?"

"Aren't you going to shout? Billy says you normally shout."

"Billy," said her mother tautly, "was in eight separate fights last year. Seven of them were related to his girlfriend and his need to defend the unconscionable things she says, which I believe he describes as 'edgy' and 'misunderstood' instead of 'grossly offensive' and 'stupid'. The other was related to iambic pentameter. So yes. I will admit to losing my temper with your brother. You, on the other hand, get the benefit of the doubt. How did it start?"

"There's a guy at school who likes me. He's supposed to be taking me to Finn's party tomorrow," she said glumly. "Kirsty thinks I'm stealing him. I tried to just walk away and she shoved me. So I asked her if she was going to let me go, and she basically said 'you drop him, or I drop you'."

"And you said?"

"No. She didn't like that. So she went for me." Celia shrugged, which hurt. "She knew what I'd say. She followed me in, and she picked a fight." She risked a sideways glance. Her mother's expression was neutral. "I didn't have a choice."

"I see." The car pulled into their drive. Her mother killed the engine. "I can't help but notice she left you some claw marks on your arms."

Celia glared at the ragged red lines. The teachers that has broken up the fight had cleaned both of them up, but it was going to be a few days before the marks of Kirsty's nails were gone. "Yep."

"And a few other bruises, I'll warrant."

"My shoulder feels like ground beef," she admitted cautiously. She flexed her hand. "And my knuckles."

"Well, you did give her a beautiful black eye," mused her mother.

Hope rose in her stomach. "Beautiful?"

"I taught you self-defence so you could look after yourself if it was the lesser of two evils." Her mother shrugged. "The other choice was being bullied. It seems to me you used it in the way I intended." She paused. "Don't let anyone dictate who you can have a relationship with, Celia. Not even me."

"Does that mean I can go to Finn's party?"

"It does."

"And does that mean you won't interrogate Will?"

"Ah. A name. Will is the boy, I take it."

"Yes. Don't scare him off."

A snort. "Permit an old lady her fun, Celia."

It had been too much to hope for. "No spelling tests."

"First lesson in negotiation. Always bargain from a position of strength. Now, aren't you supposed to be helping Finlay set up his altar of debauchery in an hour or two? Go inside and I'll get some ice for those bruises."

She grinned, even though it made her jaw twinge where a free-floating elbow had clipped it. "Thanks Mom."

-o0o-

"...mostly unscathed," finished Jodie Slone later that evening from the comfort of the Farriers' kitchen-diner.

Jane Farrier whistled. Hair up in a messy bun, apron on, she was moving like a whirlwind through the kitchen. "Good on her. But really, with Kirsty? What went wrong with that girl – I remember she used to play with our lot when they were in junior school."

"Whatever it was, it's beyond normal teenage scuffles."

"And Kirsty Ausner is not our problem," said Jane, ever the pragmatist. "This lasagne on the other hand..."

"You're sure you don't need any help?" asked Jodie as she shuffled the deck. It was as well-worn as her mother's tarot cards, and had that familiar slippery feel, like something living.

"Jodha Asiya Slone, you know the rules," her friend said with only a hint of threat as she sliced shallots at a speed that would have impressed a professional chef. She swept them into the pan with a flourish.

"Help," quoted a new voice, soft and a little timid, "is pouring the chef another glass of wine." The willowy blond woman in the doorway held out a bottle of red for approval. Kim Orage always hovered in doorways as if she wasn't sure of her welcome. Even after fourteen years. "Speaking of…?"

"As Jodie is neglecting her duties, yes," proclaimed Jane, holding out her wine glass like a begging bowl.

"I am not neglecting you," she said firmly. "We've already got through a bottle." Jodie riffled the cards one last time and set them in the middle of table. "Cut, Kim."

Kim had the same measured smile as Riose, with less of his self-assurance. Funny that the son could be so very different from his gentle mother, who Jodie always had to remind herself was not spun sugar. "Celia in a catfight, huh? Riose was so shocked he actually told me in person rather than by text."

"The Slone elbow prevails again," she said, giving her a hug and leaning back to admire the long teal maxi dress that was modestly cut, and immodestly clingy. "I wish I could wear something like that."

"You could," said Jane brusquely. "And you should."

She knew where this was going. "No speculating on my sex life."

"What sex life?" demanded Jane, levelling a merciless stare at her. "There are sloths dangling from trees who get more action. Hell, from the sounds of it, your own daughter-"

"Oh, gods, no!" Albert slapped down an armful of plates, looking horrified. Between Finn, Finn's parties, and his wife's carnage in the kitchen, it was a look he'd had a lot of practice at. "Ladies, I thought we agreed no girl talk on bridge night. It's pure luck that Celia found us a fourth player, let's at least get the man hooked before he realises what he's signed up for."

"Several years of watching our son slobber over his daughter," sighed Jane. "Darling, you must have the talk with him again. He keeps talking to me about her. He's writing her a song."

"Someone, naming no names, thought his chronic oversharing would mean we'd never have to worry. It's too late now, we should have nipped it in the bud when he was five."

"He asked me what rhymes with inflaming ardour," Jane said mournfully.

"What did you tell him?" Jodie said, torn between horror and curiosity.

"What _does _rhyme with inflaming ardour?" mused Kim. "Complaining...harder?"

"Restraining order?" suggested a low voice, which belonged to the man filling the doorframe. "Normally I don't invite myself in, but the door was open and it smells damn good in here."

"A-hah!" Jane spun round, holding an enormous knife, which probably wasn't the best way to greet a stranger. "You must be Kurt."

"I must," he agreed, sounding a little amused. Not much, Jodie suspected, would faze him. He was the sort of man who made everything else seem like background. A military posture was offset a little by the shagginess of his dark hair, but nothing could soften the black-coffee depths of his eyes.

And then he smiled, and Jodie realised she was entirely wrong.

Jane gave her hands a cursory wipe with a tea-towel and waved. "Jane Farrier. Finlay's my son. I'm afraid he has a crush on your daughter. Hence the songs."

"I won't hold it against you."

"I would if I were you," said Albert, offering an enthusiastic handshake. "There's a ukulele involved."

Kurt looked dismayed. "Not near me, there won't be."

Kim was getting to her feet, hands gripping the edge of the table.

"And this," said Albert cheerfully, "is-"

"We've met," said Kim and Kurt in unison, and she was very white, and he was suddenly that stern stranger again, and the air felt full of unspoken words.

"I didn't think I'd see you again after I left," she said, and her voice was tremulous. All of them knew what she meant: they had known Kim long enough, shared enough to have heard something of her appalling marriage.

Jodie traded a look with Albert, saw his little nod, and quietly got to her feet.

"And you don't need to see him for another minute if you don't want to, Kim," said Jane, her voice iron and ice.

"No – no, it's not – it was just a shock." Kim straightened. Colour began to seep back into her cheeks. "Kurt was – Kurt was the mediator for my divorce."

"Really." Albert didn't sound impressed. "The one where you left with Riose and not much else."

Kurt said nothing, just stood there blank-faced and tense.

"That's not fair, Albert." It was a rare rebuke from Kim. "They brought him in to keep me there. Instead he did everything he could to free me. And he succeeded." She looked squarely at Kurt then. "I never said thank you."

His shoulders relaxed. "There's no need."

"There is," she insisted. "I was so shellshocked that I was _out_, that I never had to see him again that I walked away without even thanking you for everything you did. I heard what they said to you after. And a friend of mine told me they made life difficult."

He laughed. "They made it mildly inconvenient at worst."

Kim looked around at them and flapped her hands. "Oh, sit down, all of you. He's one of us."

Jodie saw Kurt's momentary look of surprise before he hid it. "Wine?" she propsosed.

He held out a glass. "I thought you'd never ask. So what are we playing for?"

Albert said, "The glory of victory."

She chipped in, "Bragging rights."

"Suits me," said Kurt. "Is what Sunny said true? Did Celia break some girl's nose in the school bathroom?"

"You're right, Kim," said Jane cheerfully. "Gossip, gambling and booze. He is one of us."

-o0o-

"Hey, slugger," was Finn's casual greeting as Celia strode – well, limped - into the Farrier's barn. His eyes widened at the sight of her arms. "Whoa! Kirsty did that?"

"Heard you got suspended," put in Riose from the top of a ladder.

Phi was passing him nails as he hung the fairy lights. "She's been all over social media saying you tried to steal her Manolos in a jealous frenzy."

"Is that what we're calling Will these days?" she said. She winced as Riose thunked a nail in with enough forced to make the wall shudder.

"Will Ratner?" sputtered Finn. "Are you seriously saying you had a catfight over Will Ratner? Oh my god, how does that guy have women literally climbing over each other for him like he's some sort of testosterone Mount Everest and I can't even get Sunny to look at me?"

"Trust me, it's not that. It's the fact that he's human and I've spent so long with you guys I don't count as human any more. Here's another interesting thing: guess what Kirsty called me?"

Her friends looked at one another then Finn said tentatively, "Um, man-stealing skank?"

"Probably what she was thinking, but no."

"Vamp tramp," said Riose softly.

"Correct. She's in on it. Whatever it is."

"Good job she's barred too, then," said Finn cheerily. "But because we all know she's not going to pay any attention, I need your help." He rummaged in a big box on the floor. "Cee, you take the incense. You've got steady hands. Ri, you're on earth." A container of salt flew through the air and the ladder wobbled a bit as Riose caught it. "Phi, you're taking water, of course."

"Of course," murmured Phi.

"And yours truly is on fire. The plan is a nice traditional circle ward all around the house and the drive, with just one change. I'm going to link to the spell to these."

He tilted the box, and they could see the cluster of bright colour and sticks in the bottom.

"Are those...?" began Celia.

"Fireworks," he said proudly. "Mostly Catherine wheels with a jazzy little homing hex on them."

"Uh...did you do the spells?" said Riose, with very understandable caution.

"I was careful."

Celia and Riose looked at each other. "You're helping him carry it," she said. "I want a quiet life."

"Liar," muttered the vampire.

"There's nothing wrong with my magic!" proclaimed Finn.

"Finn," she said helpfully. "You know that river in Egypt?"

"The Nile? How's that rele-" He hefted the box with Riose, and the pair of them shuffled towards the door in vague synchronisation. "Oh. I get it. Ha bloody ha. I'll have you know, I've been casting spells since I was four."

"Didn't you set my stuffed bear on fire then?" chipped in Phi.

There was a very stiff silence. "Look," said Finn. "One way or another, this party's going out with a bang not a whimper. I may have set your bear on fire. And before you chime in, I may have set my hair on fire. But if there's one person you want to set the place alight, it's the guy who throws the best parties in town. Right?"

There was no arguing with that.

"Right," they chorused.

"Trust me," said the witch. "No one's going to forget my seventeenth."

_And you'll smile on your knees  
__The hunter becomes... the hunted_

-o0o-


	7. Chapter 7

Thank you to the lovely people who commented on the last part! Thank you Kiliwho, Claie de lune (Still going!), Athena's Child, Nokomis (Boy is not subtle, and also not really equipped for handling them as none of his family are going to win emotional stability awards! Celia's perception of her mom is a little different from who her mom is with her friends. Figuring out Jodie's back story - while it won't be in this - has been pretty interesting. He is Jelly McJealousface at the moment. But probably won't have a boat named after him ;) ) and OB (I would never stand between anyone and their ship. Will absolutely goes after what he wants.)

Lyrics are old-school - from _Shining Light_ by Ash from Nuclear Sounds.

Thoughts, comments and criticisms adored!

Sundogs &amp; Shadowplay

VII

_You have always been a thorn in their side  
But to me you're a shining light  
You arrive and the night is alive  
Yeah, you are a shining light_

Even when he was ostensibly relaxing, Kurt Schrader was more highly strung than a violin on K2.

"Good lord, man, stop fidgeting!" Jodie Slone exclaimed.

"They've been _hours_," he snapped back. "What are they doing?"

There was a demonic screech. Before she could muster a syllable, he hared up the stairs two at a time. _Crunch_ – that was the door making a nice dent in her wall, no doubt. Louder screams, Kurt's frantic tenor, and then a few dozen kilos of chastened man tiptoed back down the stairs.

He gave her the beseeching look of a sinner waiting outside the confessional. "Apparently there was a mascara catastrophe." His eyebrows drew together. "Don't catastrophes normally involve natural disasters?"

"Consider a badly tinted eyelash an unnatural disaster," she advised. "Anyone would think this is Sunny's first party." His face spoke volumes. "Oh. _Oh._"

Wine was necessary. She'd seen their dresses. No wait, maybe the whisky.

"What are your feelings on single malts?"

"Strong and highly proven, just like I like my whisky," he said. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

She placed a tumbler beside his chair, and carefully filled it with a couple of fingers of eighteen year old. Which she really hoped was not going to be happening to any of their children tonight. She opened her mouth to say it, then stopped.

Jane would have found it hilarious, but Kurt was a man on the edge.

"Not drunk," she equivocated instead. "Just un-sober enough to stop panicking."

"I am not panicking."

"Quite. While you continue to vigorously not panic over there, perhaps you can help me think up some awkward questions to ask Celia's date."

A reluctant smile tugged up his mouth. "Don't scare him off."

"Please. I'm just the first line of defence. If he gets by me, he's got her big brother and that rabble of friends to deal with, and they have a much nastier bite. Wait until Sunny brings home the first boy. You won't be so sanguine then."

"Sunny will _not_ be bringing boys back any time soon," he said firmly. "I'll forbid it."

"That's a bold move. I'm sure teenagers must have _something_ they find more tempting than the forbidden, but I'm struggling. Sleep, perhaps. Snapchat."

"Maybe you have a point." He took a thoughtful sip. "What's a snapchat?"

Oh dear. He was serious. "It's something you'll learn a lot about if you insist on forbidding boys."

"Explain."

Well, what the man wanted, the man got. "Pour me a glass. And pour yourself another one. You're going to want it."

-o0o-

The doorbell droned like the buzzer in a boxing match. And Celia had ringside seats for her mother versus Will, round one. She hoped he could hold his own; she only wanted one knockout in the room, and that was her in her lace dress.

Sunny started humming _Ride of the Valkyries._

"That's not funny," muttered Celia around the last coat of lipstick.

"You know it is. How do I look?" She swirled to her feet in a smooth motion; her French braid swished like a whip, stark against the floating wisps of the periwinkle dress. It bared her shoulders and back in a plunging curve, contrasted by the zigzagged hem. In it, Sunny looked delicate and fey, and somehow dangerous too.

"Don't be surprised if Finn jabbers like a fool, that's all I'm saying."

Sunny slid on her flat pumps. "What do you mean jabber? He always talks a lot."

"He talks a lot to hide the fact his brain is oozing out of his ears at the sight of you." Celia paused from where she knelt, fastening her strappy heels on. "Tell me you realised he has fallen madly, deeply and tragically in lust with you."

"He has?" She preened a little. "And he knows? About the demon thing?"

"What? No, of course not."

The gleam died in her eyes. "Oh. I thought Riose would have told him. You said Finn was his best friend." She cocked her head. "Isn't...isn't that a best friend thing, sharing secrets?"

She was torn between racing downstairs to intercept her mother in full flow, and the utter pathos in that question, as if friends were merely an abstract concept Sunny had heard of. "Normally. Except sharing your secret could get someone hurt. We'd never do that without your permission. But if you want Finn to know, tell him. He wouldn't care."

"Uh-huh." A world of scepticism in those words. "I've heard that before."

Oh god, that was her mother's voice downstairs, and she couldn't hear the words, which was even worse. Celia fiddled with her other shoe. "Sunny, I can't make you believe me. Tell Finn, or don't. All the goofing about is a big front for the fact he's waiting for his life's great love. And trust me, when he meets that someone, he won't care if they're human or demon or angel. When he falls, he'll fall heart and soul."

There was a dense silence, broken at long last by Sunny's sigh.

"What a love that would be," she whispered. "Like a thousand days of fire."

Clued in by the warm breeze that had appeared in the sealed room, Celia glanced up. There was a brilliance in Sunny's eyes, radiant in her skin, as if the mere thought of Finn's perpetual devotion had flushed her with life.

There were a lot of reasons for someone to love Finn. But this wasn't on the list.

"Just remember that we like his heart and soul the way they are," she said sharply. "Unbroken."

There was something of the hawk staring down the mouse in her eyes. "Are you threatening me?"

"Warning you." She sighed. "Sunny, you're beautiful and mysterious and that's like – like crack to Finn. And most of the guys. But Finn's the one I don't want messed with, because he's my friend. If you like him – really like him, not just the _idea_ of him, you guys figure it out. But don't hurt him."

She looked up at the demon before her, bathed in the light of a world she couldn't see, burning with its cruel heat. It could so easily become a fight.

And the thought came to her: I'm so tired of fighting, and it's not even the weekend.

"Please don't hurt him," she said softly. "I can't stop you, but I can ask."

The heat seeped away. "And I can honour that." Sunny's smile wobbled. "But what if he hurts me?"

Even demons were afraid of heartbreak. That was reassuring, somehow.

"Then I will kick his ass," she said solemnly. "No one hurts my friends. Not even my other friends."

For a moment then, Sunny glowed with a light that was nothing to do with demons. All was well.

Except...

"Will!" she gasped, grabbed Sunny. "Downstairs, now!"

-o0o-

It was quiet. That was not a good sign. Quiet meant trouble. Quiet meant an absent boy or a speechless one. Celia paused outside the living room, smoothed her dress and donned her mask of neutrality.

In they went.

"Wow." There was Will, turning from the family portrait, free of tears and anger. He sounded relieved. "You two look like fire and ice."

"You're here," she said, too astonished to remember manners.

"William has been telling me about your lab exploits," said her mother. "Apparently you have wonderful chemistry-" She paused to take a sip of – wait, was that whisky? "-lessons together."

Kurt looked like he was trying not to laugh.

"He begs innocence on the subject of why so many women are duelling for his honour in the modern Colosseum that is the girls' bathroom." Her mother tilted a look at Celia's scratches, which she had left bare. "I suspect it's a question you'll be asked a lot, so I'd prepare an answer if I were you. One better than William's _just lucky, I guess_."

Will shifted uneasily.

"Well, have a lovely evening," her mother chirped. "Don't be back too late."

What?

"Is that it?" said Will, equally startled. "Based on, uh, previous history, I was expecting more of a...Colditz feel."

"Oh. How descriptive. Well, you haven't tried to sing, and you had the sense to refuse a shot of whisky." Her mother's sideways scowl at Kurt explained that. "You managed a better compliment than _wow, your beams are on full_, which was what the last one had to say, and you genuinely seem to like my daughter. I'm sure you want to..." To Celia's everlasting horror, her mother whipped out some air quotes. "Get jiggy with it, or whatever the youth of today call making the beast with two backs, but that isn't your only concern. So congratulations. You have my seal of approval."

Kurt had his head in his hands. Judging by the smothered sounds, he was laughing so hard he might rupture something.

"Go forth and multiply," said her mother with a negligent wave of her hand. "By which I mean, go forth and absolutely do not, under any circumstances, multiply. But enjoy it."

Will looked shell-shocked. This was familiar territory.

"Thanks Mom," she said, accepting this Pyrrhic victory. A wicked idea struck her and before she could think better of it, Celia added. "We'll be back late. And as you've clearly got one thing on your mind, don't seduce Mr S. I do not want to hear about any viewings of _Crouching Tiger Mom, Hidden Shagging._"

She heard her mother's gasp – and not the rest, because like Harrison Ford in _The Fugitive_, Celia was running for her life, Will and Sunny hot on her heels as they burst, laughing, into the lush summer evening.

-o0o-

By the time they arrived, fashionably late, the buzz was beginning. Sunny saw it before she heard it; ribbons of gold and green and cherry-red undulated in the sky, human passions painted on the only canvas large enough to hold them.

Underneath the display, the barn seemed small. Ordinary. That suited her fine. As they drew closer, she felt the music in the balls of her feet, and her heart leapt in response. She was here, at a party, and the only people who knew what she had become didn't seem to mind.

The wooden doors swung open to reveal a low-lit world pierced only by the webs of fairy lights that laced the walls and the glittering fog of emotion she was learning to ignore. A makeshift DJ booth was manned by one of the shapeshifters as he mixed and tweaked and polished the tracks on a pair of shiny laptops. Speakers flanked him, and while it was too early for dancing, knots of people congregated nearby.

Finn bounced over and gave Celia an enthusiastic hug and Will a flinty stare. Sunny was expecting a hug too, but instead she got a weirdly formal handshake.

"You made it!" he crowed. "Grab a drink, someone's already dumped a bottle of rum into the virgin mojito and deflowered it. Sam's got an amazing set lined up, and I have got some even more amazing moves to go with it."

"Just you?" said Celia, suspicious.

"Do I look the sort of man who works alone?" he demanded, throwing his arms wide. "Arch will be joining me for our inaugural interpretation of the 80s finest hits."

Sunny re-evaluated her opinion of him. "I didn't know you could dance."

"Like nobody's watching," said Finn loftily. "Some have called it poetry in motion."

"Didn't Leanne throw up in her own hair after she said that?" enquired Will.

"That's not the point." Finn turned to her, and Sunny was surprised at the feelings that emanated from him – uncertainty mingled with hope, at odds with his confident smile. "Can I get you started with a drink?"

"Mojito sounds good," she ventured.

"And tastes better." He steered her towards a table packed with plastic cups. As shapeshifters parted before them like the Red Sea, Sunny tried not to notice. Instead she focused on the soft sensation of his nerves, fluttering on her skin like butterfly wings. "You look great, by the way. Did Celia tell you how these things normally go?"

"Not really. I think she was kind of distracted."

He wrinkled his nose. "Oh. Ratner. Well, he's not the worst guy she's dated."

"That's a rousing endorsement."

"I just think she can do better. And I wish she thought it too," he said a touch grumpily. "Want to see something cool?"

She slid him a sideways look. "Maybe. Is this going to be anything like when Mike said he had something amazing I had to see?"

His eyes widened. "Depends. Did the something involve him unzipping his flies?"

Sunny grimaced. "Yes. He wasn't too happy at what happened next."

"A swift punch to the crotch?"

"Worse, I think." His raised eyebrows were an invitation to continue. "I laughed. Quite a lot." She leaned in. "It wasn't very amazing at all."

A laugh burst from him. "_Ouch_. No wonder he was sulking all day. Talk about rough justice."

"So what did you want to show me?" she asked, thinking of Celia's words: _all that goofing about's a big front._

He cupped his hands around her drink, and when he took them away, blue flames rippled across the surface.

_Fire…_ Sunny stared at it, paralysed. Before, she had never minded fire – it was heat, light, it was marshmallows toasted on campfires, family evenings around a log-burner, birthday candles and barbecues.

Then she had been taken to the hollow place and she had learned the true versatility of fire. In the ever-changing, shapeless void where the demons existed, fire was their greatest weapon. They hated it, for it was all they were not, and so it was both their obsession and their greatest punishment. To stave off the darkness, they filled their world with flames, and there was only one source of fuel.

She, who had defied them so long, came to know fire as a drowning man knows the strength of water.

She had learned how the pain of a burn would linger long after the flames were extinguished. She had learned how her skin looked as it was seared away, layer by layer. She had come to hate her own body's power to heal because it meant there would only be more pain the next day; because she could not cease to hope for her humanity back, for Kurt and Aurenna to save her from the future and what she would become.

She had come to within a petal's thickness of breaking; of scattering the pieces of her self like ashes because she could not bear to burn any longer.

Scarless, she stood with fire in her hands, and quivered.

"Sunny..." Concern, raw in his voice. His hands covered hers: and Finn drew her back into this world. His emotions were like a cool wind, tearing her ghosts into scraps of mist. "Are you all right?"

Her voice was scratchy. "Please, can you put it out?"

His fingers flickered. The flames simmered into nothing.

"Thank you." Her muscles unlocked. Embarrassment came next – there were tears standing in her eyes, and no way to explain herself. What sort of demon feared the fire? What sort of person froze in terror at a lit drink? "I'm sorry."

There was a gentleness to Finn then; he took away the drink and replaced it with another. She didn't know how to thank him for doing something she hadn't known would help. And then he brought her a napkin so she could dab away the unwanted tears.

She cleared her throat. "Maybe you should have unzipped your flies."

"At least I'd have made you laugh," he sighed. "This doesn't normally happen."

"You were going to tell me what does normally happen," she prompted. At his hopeful glance, she managed a wavering smile. "Please?"

He perked up. "Well, first, we mingle. You dazzle the men with your beauty, and I dazzle them with my witty remarks and debonair style."

Her smile firmed. "I can't be witty or debonair?"

"Of course. But with this hair, I can't be beautiful, so you have to leave me a virtue or two." He held up a lock of ginger hair for scrutiny. "Then we drink, we dance, we have a great time, and everyone lives happily ever after. Until they wake up tomorrow and realise just how much rum Marcus tipped into the mojitos." He paused. "Think you can handle it?"

"I don't know." She took a deep breath. "But there's only one way to find out, isn't there?"

-o0o-

People were staring. A lot. They stared, and they were talking in that low fast way that meant Celia couldn't hear anything but the familiar cadence of her name. She felt the scratches, lurid on her skin, felt the bruise she had almost hidden under artful curls.

"So how much trouble will you be in when you get home?" said Will, grinning at her.

"Depend how funny Mom thought it was. She tends to award points for style. Billy once got away without a grounding when he broke her phone because he was juggling a cantaloupe and a leg of lamb at the same time." She shrugged at his startled look. "She said her stupidity in watching it cancelled out his stupidity in doing it. And he tenderised the lamb pretty well."

He laughed. "Your family seem really tight." His eyes were wistful. Celia only knew what little he'd told her about his family from comments in labs – divorced parents, a disinterested mother in another state, attentive but high-flying dad. "If a little nuts."

"A little?" She linked her arm with his. "Please. My family's so full of nuts there should be an allergy warning on the front door."

They were spotted by some of Will's teammates. Time dissolved in banter and conversation and a carousel of brightly-coloured drinks. She tried to ignore the flick of eyes to her wounds; no one asked, but everyone looked. To her relief, Sunny joined them, and some of the attention slid to her.

Butterfly-like, Finn darted from group to group, playing host. He was in good form from the looks of it, swallowed up in hugs galore from girls, and enjoying every moment.

No Riose, but that was usual. He would be late because he'd squeezed in a catnap to ensure he was awake until the bitter end.

Chatter flowed over the music. She reckoned a good third of the school had turned up, packing the place to the gills. She was starting to relax when beside her, Will stiffened.

"What's up?" she said, following his gaze. There was a girl loitering by the drinks, watching them. A senior, she thought.

"I do not believe her," he muttered. Then he glanced down, mouth bent in a frown. "Cee...god, this is awkward. She's my brother's ex. She keeps – hassling me. I cracked, I said I'd give her something of his. She was supposed to collect at the end of the night, but…do you mind if…?"

"No, go," she said easily. "I can amuse myself."

He cracked a smile. "I told you you're amazing, right?"

Will was absorbed into the throng. For a while, she people-watched, grinning at the sight of Sam Sheldon, normally so shy, defending the makeshift DJ booth like the wolf he was.

Finn was, as always, first on the dancefloor with Arch. Their rhythmic flailing was enough to persuade others to cast dignity and decorum to the wind. Even Sunny joined in, coaxed by a couple of the football team. As friends, friends of friends and friends-twice-removed continued to slip through the doors, the buzz of conversation was soft counterpoint to the beat.

She glimpsed Phi's russet hair among some of the shapeshifters. Jo was there too, looking icily glamorous in a silver dress. Tentative, Celia approached – until Adrian Reynard gave her such an unfriendly look that she stopped, feeling hot and cold all over.

Things with Jo still weren't smoothed over, then, and this wasn't the place. Tonight, she didn't want to dredge up the past, didn't want to feel it coating her again like grease she couldn't wash off. She wanted to dance and chat and laugh and just be.

Then she felt other eyes – curious, wary, a dozen different gazes sweeping her like laser beams. Celia was too conscious of the scratches on her arms, red-pink through the make-up. Too aware of the bruises dull beneath her skin, like a cheetah's blotches. She felt alone and exposed. And she wanted out, away, now.

"Ri showed up yet?" she called to Finn when he boogied near enough.

"Fire pit!" he shouted back. "Wouldn't let me light it."

Outside, then, where the crowds weren't. That sounded like bliss: the camouflage of darkness, and Riose. He wouldn't ask anything, wouldn't poke or pry.

Celia headed out into the twilight.

-o0o-

Sunny broke away from the dancefloor, breathing hard. There was a merry buzz in the air that made her feel a little giddy, like she was on the first day of holiday.

She found a solid wall to lean against, a cold glass of something to clutch and best of all, space in the press. Sunny tipped back her head and let it wash over her. It had been a long time since she'd felt such warm emotions.

Except – there. Like a flaw in silk, something that might unravel the night.

She felt her way along the emotion like Theseus in the labyrinth. At its end, no minotaur - just a very pale girl with a smog of brown hair and a sullen mouth. She was listening, albeit reluctantly, to Will Ratner. All the while, her resentment swelled like a boil.

Still. It wasn't the virulent hate she'd felt at school. And it couldn't be – the other thing she could pick up was the glimmer of power in the girl. A witch, and a fairly powerful one at that.

Will broke away, nothing coming from him but a faint determination. He spotted her and made a beeline over. "Hey Sunny. You okay on your own?"

"Taking a breather." She gestured to Finn, who had executed a hands-free backflip to wide acclaim. "How does he keep it up?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Practice. Lots of it. Him and Arch got into break-dancing a couple of years ago. Between them, I think they've broken three ribs, dislocated a shoulder and Finn has definitely face-planted into the floor before. They're pretty much the definition of suffering for your art."

"I'm not sure it's art," she said thoughtfully.

He grinned. It was a nice smile, she supposed, if you liked teeth. Which Celia apparently did. "I wasn't talking about the acrobatics."

"What were-" Finn was laughing with a girl. "Oh. Okay."

"Uh huh." He nudged her. "Be careful, Sunny. He's fun and he's goofy, but Farrier's kind of a mayfly. All surface, no substance. Not the sort of guy for someone like you."

"Someone like me?" she echoed. It sounded well-meant, and he even felt earnest.

"A class act," he clarified. " Speaking of, have you seen Cee?"

"She went outside."

"Thanks. I think the grand finale's about to start." People had formed a circle around Finn and Arch, who had the poised look of two people about to execute a plan of grandiose proportions. Or possibly desperation. "Catch you later."

He left her in a puddle of solitude. It took her a moment to place her feelings. She felt off-kilter, like she stood on shifting ground. _He'll fall heart and soul,_ said Celia. _All surface, no substance_, countered Will. Both of them shone with conviction. But one of them had to be wrong.

It bothered her, badly. She wasn't entirely sure why.

-o0o-

As Celia closed the doors, relief swept over her on the velvety summer air. The weight of being watched was gone.

Set back from the barn, the fire pit had been installed in rough fashion, nothing more than a piece of steel someone had hammered into a curve. Leaning over it, intent, was Riose, prodding bits of coal into place.

"Pretty sure the party's in there," he said without looking up. "And the people."

There was an edge on that she didn't understand. "Which is why I'm out here. No one's staring at me."

"Ah." He frowned, and sprinkled something that smelled highly flammable over the coals. "Haven't Finn and Arch assaulted the dancefloor yet? That should distract everyone."

"They've seen that sideshow every year. My bruises, on the other hand, are a novelty." She shifted uneasily. "Everyone's staring."

"Well, you flattened Kirsty," he said wryly. "Everyone wants to see what giant-slayers look like these days."

"That's my excuse for hiding out here. What's yours?"

There was the scrape-fizz of the match flickering into life. Riose held it gingerly over the coals.

"Hiding's not-" He glanced up, and the match tumbled down. With a whoosh, the fire leapt up like a great gold hare springing from its hindquarters, and burned away the rest of his words. Nothing remained but his naked expression.

It was almost shock on his face, unpolished and unpractised. And then it became something else, dark and flickering in his eyes, the opposite of the stares inside. She felt it like a warm breath, a frisson that made her aware of the curve of her hips, the lushness of her mouth, the lace snug on her skin.

For a breathlessly brief moment, Riose stared at her, and she stared at him, and felt like both of them were seeing something different.

And then the fire slumped back, tame. Shadow concealed him, as it often did.

"-not the word I'd use," he said.

"No? What is?"

"Hoping." There was a huskiness to his voice, barely above a whisper.

She matched him, softness for softness. "For what?"

They stood in a pool of silence, and he hooked his hand around his neck as if he wanted to speak but didn't know what to say. The firelight played tricks with her vision, painting pieces of him in gold – that stubborn jaw, the taut lines of his shoulders, tantalising slices of his face but never quite enough to read his expression.

His lips parted-

"Cee?" Her name was accompanied by a blast of music. Will was loitering in the cracked-open doors, looking expectant. "You have got see what Farrier and Arch are doing!"

"Guess the sideshow's still drawing the crowds," said Riose. He gave a short laugh. "Go on, you don't want to miss it."

"If that song's what I think it is, I want to know which one of them's going to be doing the lift." She smiled at him, not sure why she felt a little lost. "Come in with us."

His expression dimmed. "Nah, I'd better make sure we don't burn the place to the ground. Besides, I saw rehearsals."

"Sure?"

"Cee, come on!" called Will.

"Certain," he said. "Go. The fun's inside."

She turned back to Will, and the smile came easily to her lips, even knowing she was going back to all those inquisitive eyes. Because she carried the knowledge wrapped around her like armour: there was one person here who had looked at her and seen not a victim, not a bully, not today's story or tomorrow's debris.

Under his eyes, she had been more than bruises or her tentative heart.

More, too, than an old friend – though quite what, she couldn't quantify.

-o0o-

"That," said Will thoughtfully, "was indescribable."

Arch and Finn were still in the midst of congratulations and whoops as the last strains of the music faded away.

"I did not know they'd recruited the rest of the athletics team as backing dancers," she agreed. "That's not a sight I'll forget in a hurry."

"Not without a lot of therapy." He scooped up a couple more drinks. "I wasn't expecting full-on costumes."

"It's Finn. He's always all-in," she said. "Though I have to admit, the white dress was commitment."

"It was the wig that sold me."

Celia trailed him up to the loft, which smelt of sawdust and spilled sugary drinks. Old couches broke up the space, scattered with faded cushions. The eaves were full of fairy-light constellations that barely parted the shadows.

Will found them a sofa, soft as a cloud. He collapsed onto it with a relieved sigh. "I don't know how you do it in those heels."

She slid down next to him, toeing off her shoes. "Briefly, that's how I do it. Sorry to spoil the illusion."

He knitted his hands behind his head and lay back. "Maybe I'm not a fan of the illusion."

"Careful. The illusion's pretty and glamorous. Do you really want the bare bones, bare knuckle, bare-all reality?"

His eyes were as dark as melted chocolate. "Bare-all, you said?"

She felt herself flushing. "Bare knuckle, too."

"Did you really give Kirsty a black eye?"

"I really did."

"Over me?"

Celia hesitated. "Mostly. She told me to keep away. I told her you could make up your own mind."

"Not many people have fought for me." He straightened and took her arm, fingers gentle as he traced the scratches. "I'm sorry you got caught in the middle. All those guys – Mike, Kirsty – we used to be close. But they want one thing and I want something else, and the gap keeps getting wider. They want someone to blame, because..." He sighed. "It's easier than the truth."

She'd had no idea. "What truth?"

He was silent, moving only in the whisk of his fingers over her skin. Then he said, slowly, "You've got brothers and sisters, haven't you?"

"One sister. Two brothers," she said. "Don't you, too?" The name came to her, buried in the list of the damned. "Jason?"

"Had." He shook his head before her graceless apologies came tumbling out. "No need. It was kept quiet. No one wanted to talk about it – about him." He drew back – hooked an arm around one knee, his body a barricade. His gaze sifted to the ceiling "Except me."

"What happened?" she asked.

"They said Jason killed himself. He was found hanged. He was my hero, you know, like big brothers are. We were different, mostly. School was never his thing, except for football and track. My dad hated that, and he hated it even more when Jase dropped out and moved to the city. He got into a trade there, made all these friends. He sounded so damn happy last time he called me."

"Did you talk a lot?"

"Yeah." A wry smile. "Every week. He'd call me and we'd bitch a bit about dad, and shoot the shit, and he'd tell me about the city and his job and all the people he met. He felt like he was doing something worthwhile, you know? He had a purpose. And then he didn't call. And he didn't call the next week either."

"And you knew," she said softly.

"Yeah. I wanted to be wrong, but I knew. The next day the police were at the door. And nothing was the same after that. Nothing. I found out that no one knows what to say to you. And they don't want to talk about it, really. They don't want to have to hear your grief, because it reminds them they might feel it too. Turns out that they wanted the world to be full of parties and pep rallies, and instead I was arranging a funeral because my dad refused to do anything but pay for it."

"Will..." she whispered, aghast.

"None of them came. They all knew Jase. He'd given them lifts and bought them beer, and they didn't even have the fucking grace to come to his funeral." He was all rigid lines, taut with anger.

"I'm sorry," she said. She reached out, brushed his clenched fist.

"Me too." The tension dissolved from him; he opened his hand, fingers lacing with hers briefly. "I grew up, and they didn't want to leave Neverland. All of them can feel the distance, but they can't blame themselves, so they blamed you."

She felt deeply sorry for him, mired in this war between human and inhuman, touched by it without even knowing it was happening. It had hijacked his grief, and she couldn't even tell him that.

"There's more to it than that," she said. "Kirsty's never liked me."

"Or anyone. Don't take it personally. And don't be scared off." His eyes sought hers and in them she saw intent, felt it in the way he drew closer. "Not yet, anyway. I've got a whole world to show you."

The air seemed dimmer, as if everything was shrinking down to the space between them. She felt breathless, hot, and time slowed as she took a deep breath-

That tasted of smoke.

-o0o-

Sunny followed the girl outside. People had dispersed like dandelion seeds in the wind as the night drew inexorably on. The flicker of the fire pit drew them, and the moths too, who filled the air with the barely-there beat of suicidal wings.

She, however, gave it a cautious berth. No point in being too conspicuous. Old habits died hard, harder than she had.

Sunny searched the shadows for a likely spot where she could watch without anyone returning the favour. There – but the spot was filled already.

He was probably trustworthy. Despite his surname.

Riose gave her a nod as she folded onto the grass beside him. His tone was guarded. "Sunny."

"You mentioned the Furies," she said, keeping one eye on the witch. "On my first day."

"I did." It took skill to look so relaxed and yet to keep your hands free for attack, legs coiled to move.

"How did you know?"

"Aside from the fact you turned up with Kurt Schrader and Aurenna Ravija? The golden girl and the blademaster?" She caught a glimmer of a half-smile. "It's the way you assess everyone. Decding whether you could take them out. The answer's always yes. And that look – it's Blue all over."

"It's a good look," she murmured. "So what if it isn't mine?"

"Do you really think he's your friend?" said Riose, curiosity softening the words.

"Not in the way you mean." Blue Malefici had been a constant in her life since he first found her. She fancied she knew a little of him. "He's not kind, or warm, or...well, fun. But I don't think I need any of those things from him. He makes me be honest with myself. Which I hate, sometimes. He'll use me. He'll make a weapon of me. But..." She laughed, hearing the wrongness of it even as the words came from her. "_What_ a weapon I'll be."

"Yeah. I know that feeling. He's worse than Therese, sometimes."

"Is she...?"

"My sister," he confirmed.

"Is that how you wound up involved with the Furies?"

"No, actually." A poison drop of bitterness spiked his words. "It was part of my mother's divorce agreement. My father's family didn't want me to lose touch with my nature, and my mother couldn't get over her resentment enough to let me visit the enclave, so that was the compromise. Summer with the Furies."

"You didn't like it?" she said, feeling she was moving onto treacherous ground.

"I was four. They taught me to fight with swords. I loved it. But my mother left my sister on that enclave. She fled it, like a criminal, and she's fought every attempt my father ever made to see me."

"You never met him?" she said, surprised. "Surely you could have taken a field trip one summer."

"The Furies enforce the agreement." The susurrus of the leaves swallowed his sigh. "Which means my own sister stops me from visiting my father. That's what my mother did. She built the wall and made Therese patrol it."

Sunny nudged him. "Could be worse. My father was King Herod, my mother's queen of the demons, and when I took a mortal wound killing him, she saved me so she could feed off my memories for eternity."

Silence. Then Riose laughed, the sound rueful, and said, "You win, demon girl. Why are you dragging yourself out here anyway?"

She angled a couple of fingers at the witch, who was drifting through the knots of people by the fire. There was some motive to her movement, to the way she paused at the edge of conversations. "Her. Know her?"

"A senior. Witch, I think. She's just one of those people you see around." Riose leaned forward, a hound on point. "What's interesting about her?"

"Her feelings." They came to Sunny like vibrations on a tin-can telephone. "Everyone here's full of sunshine and rainbows, but not her. One conversation with Will, and I can taste her anger on the air like Mike's overdone aftershave."

"Will?" The name twanged on the air with ferocity. "What would he have to say to her?"

"They don't hang around then?"

"No. Will's all about the jocks and the gossip girls. Or he was. He's branched out in the last few months." His displeasure was evident. "But not to mystery seniors."

"Hmm. Don't suppose you could read her mind?"

A pause. "No. She's got good shields."

They watched her for several minutes. The witch spoke to no one, but she listened avidly. Ever-moving, she had a hummingbird's restless energy that masked the fact she was alone; she always _looked_ like part of a group, there on the fringes. It was a very clever tactic.

"But what is she trying to _do_?" she murmured, half to herself.

Before she knew it, Riose was on his feet. "Let's see if I can find out."

"Wait-" she hissed, but he ignored her.

As he stepped out into the light, his stance changed. Suddenly there was a laziness, an arrogance about the way he walked. He scooped up an abandoned drink, and the illusion was complete; one mildly drunk good-looking guy, going somewhere. As if he stumbled, he collided with the witch, and then it was an easy, clever scene: flurry of apologies, hands out, earnest, then flash of a charming smile, a compliment, two, and the conversation was rolling.

She was impressed. It was a skill she'd never been taught. Had never needed, really. Someone had trained Riose Orage to be a trickster. But the most interesting thing was that he only did it at need. With his friends – not Furies, hell, not even supernatural – she had the feeling he was himself.

She honed in on their emotions. From Riose, almost nothing; he was eggshell-blank, controlled. From her, skeins of sensation unrolling – caution, and exhilaration and hope, weaving into a bright tapestry that felt just like everyone else here. Well, we were wrong then, thought Sunny-

Then a sudden ragged moth-hole of fear. Fear stretching, unravelling every other feeling – until all that remained was a blackness to rival the blaze of the fire pit.

The witch made her excuses, hiked her bag up on her shoulder, and left with ungainly haste.

Riose returned as easily as he had left. "That was strange," he remarked.

"Strange but harmless," she said, bemused. "She feels – satisfied."

"What's she got..." He drew a sharp breath, and his eyes flared the blue-white of lightning. "The barn!"

She followed his gaze – and saw flames, crawling on one corner, climbing for the thatched roof.

"Oh my god," she said. "They won't realise...all those people..."

"Come on!" Riose was gone, sprinting towards the doors like a man devoid of fear. "We need to get everyone out, now!"

And then she heard a further cry, and tongues of fire were leaping on the other side of the barn. They spread too quickly, eating up the walls with snarling speed. Fear reached up her legs like icy arms - she was unable to move, to do anything except watch and dread. Sunny knew this then for what it was.

With forethought and spite, with a hunter's patience and a scientist's precision, someone had had laid a deadly trap.

The night burned: and she, daughter of fire, dared do nothing to stop it.

_These are the days, you often say,_  
_There's nothing that we cannot do_  
_Beneath a canopy of stars_  
_I'd shed blood for you_

-o0o-

Hope you enjoyed it!  
Ki


	8. Chapter 8

So here I am: back, and married. It has been an exciting few months. But now a quieter few months, which is super welcome!

My brilliant, and very beloved readers - thank you so much OB (Trust me, those dynamics will be interesting!), Izzy (It's kind of fun writing the adults as they have this whole other life their kids are just very unaware of in some ways - which will become obvious later.) Clair de Lune (There was an early version of this chapter where Zeke did show up, but it just didn't work for this bit of the story unfortunately - or rather, the chapter would have been a sight longer. I think Riose has always been very good at hiding his feelings - too good, perhaps!), Nokomis (Yeah, once I started writing Jodie and Kurt, they have a fun dynamic. Kurt's going to get a big shock when he works out who her adopted son is. As for Will - bonus points if you can spot which story his brother appeared in, albeit briefly! I am hoping to be able to update much more quickly now the Big Thing that is a wedding is out of the way.) Bex (Thank you! Oh, she is to do with it - the real question is the why...) &amp; the wonderful RA Storyteller (From my point of view, it's completely awesome. No objections here!)

Comments are wonderful, and so is concrit, so please feel free!

Sundogs &amp; Shadowplay

VIII

_I was the match and you were the rock  
Maybe we started this fire  
We sat apart and watched  
All we had burned on the pyre  
We were born with nothing  
And we sure as hell have nothing now_

Funny, at first Celia thought that someone had let off firecrackers downstairs. It was the kind of thing that happened at Finn's parties.

Will drew back, frowning. "Is it me, or is it kind of-"

His eyes widened, and reflected in them was a gleam as small and bright as a coin. Time seemed to slow around her; his mouth was warping into a word she should know, but Celia was already looking up to see what had transfixed him.

Fire dangled from the roof like a vast serpent with its jaws agape.

"Move!" she cried. She grabbed Will, toppling the pair of them to the ground.

The tongue of flame broke loose, and it seemed to drift down like a maple seed caught on the wind, almost harmless, almost beautiful. Part of her wanted to reach out and catch it – and then it landed on the sofa. Flames erupted upwards. Heat clamped like feverish hands on her face as she scrambled back to the mezzanine railings. Only then did she see that the roof and walls were ablaze.

"Shit, the place is going up!" Will shouted into her ear.

She glanced over the rail to the ground and was shocked at how thick the smoke already was. "We have to go. Now."

And she would have to leave her stilettos behind. She was barefoot in a burning building. Wonderful.

"Stay close," he urged. "It'd be easy to get lost in this."

She followed Will, tentative, feeling the rough wood pricking the balls of her feet. The staircase felt miles away in a haze of choking air. Each passing moment brought more smoke, thicker, darker.

They hit the staircase, and Will swore.

"What is it?"

"Wall's smoking. Don't touch the banister that side."

This was not good. Surely fires didn't spread this fast, even in wooden barns with thatched roofs.

She stepped down, cautious. The stairs were as hot as sun-blasted sand, full of splinters and treacherous.

"Come on!" called Will, a couple of feet further down. "I want off this thing!"

Pain lanced through the ball of her foot. Celia yelped, and he appeared through the smoke, fear warring with concern.

"You okay...?" He saw her feet. "Where the hell are your shoes?"

She looked back at him with grim finality. "By the couch. Kicked them off, remember?" Celia wrenched out a bit of wood and tottered up. "I'm sorted."

Temporarily, at any rate. She made it to the bottom of the stairs, but her foot was bleeding. What alarmed her more was the fact she couldn't hear anyone else. It felt like she and Will were alone in the barn.

They wove over the floor, achingly slow. Paths formed, then swirled away in smoky black wafts, trapping them in this kaleidoscopic, claustrophobic labyrinth. Every step was pain. Another splinter jabbed into her heel – she stopped, calling him, and bent to dig it out.

When she glanced up, he was a barely-there smear on the smoke. Panic roughened his voice. "Celia! Come _on!_"

She opened her mouth to answer, and there was a noise she'd never heard, like the sound of tin foil tearing on a cosmic scale. A dark blur in her peripheral vision – she flung herself back as there was a tremendous crash, and something like bright rain spattered her...

Pain came in its wake – it was not water, but a rain of toasted debris that she scoured from her skin, her hair, her ruined dress.

Cool air lapped at her as the smoke cleared to bare utter devastation. The roof was gone. No, worse – it was heaped on the floor between her and Will, and already the flames surged up, up, stronger than before. A barrier divided them as far as she could see.

"_Celia!" _he yelled. "Are you okay?"

He hovered on the other side, edging close to the flames before he was forced back, coughing. They stared at one another, the truth written there between them in loops of fire.

"Get out!" she said.

"I can't leave you."

Skeins of smoke drifted between them like gauze. She had to shout to hear herself. "I'll find another way. Go! You can't stay, Will."

"I'll get help. I'll bring them back..." His voice faded, and then his silhouette, and she was left in a world that was nothing but swirling smoke, nothing but fire that rippled ever closer, moving like the shoulders of a stalking tiger. "We'll come back for you, I promise!"

Liar, she thought, sad, angry, so, so afraid. No one will come. No one can.

Then she squared her shoulders, breathing too hard, too fast, and tried to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. There had to be a way out. If the building was collapsing around her, well, she just needed it to collapse in the right place.

It was a plan so ludicrous even Finn would balk at it. But at that moment, it was all she had. It was everything she had, down to her last breath.

-o0o-

People spewed out of the barn like angry wasps – dark dots that scattered this way and that, first in a flurry and then in a swarm. Sunny stood, arms wrapped around herself, wanting to help. Unable to take even one small step closer to the flames.

"Sunny!" Finn appeared, face bleak. "Have you seen Celia? Or Phi? Riose?"

Knots of people were gathering – the hum of noise was becoming a hubbub punctuated with shouts and tears and tension. She kept trying to blink away all the emotions that fluttered bird-like above them all, winged shapes of gold and lightning-white.

"I was outside with Riose. He went to help." She spotted the vampire, supporting a boy across the grass who was clutching a laptop to his chest like a child. "Is everyone out?"

"Don't know." He turned to the burning building. "I don't even know how to check."

"Finn!" Delphine Thetis came over at a jog, concern in her face. "Thank god you're okay."

"We need to find out if anyone's missing."

"We can do that." The shapeshifter girl, Jo, appeared. She looked shaken, hair strewn loose about her shoulders and a long burn already fading along her arm. "Phi, you go left and I'll go right?" She gave Sunny an impersonal glance, still keeping a distance from her. "No offence, new girl, but you don't know anyone."

"None taken," she murmured.

The two girls sank into the night. She watched them move from group to group, asking questions, each time seeming to receive the answer they wanted. No one had left the building for a few moments, and Riose was headed their way.

"Happy Birthday," he said to Finn. "Blow the candles out on this one."

The witch's smile had a lopsided cant. "It'd be a hell of a wish. Saw you saved Sam's laptop."

"He was pissed I made him leave the second one." He rubbed absently at a smoke stain on his cheek. "Barn's a goner."

"Yeah. Telling my parents is going to be fun." Finn groaned. "Oh gods, they're going to think I did it."

Sunny said, "Do you...set a lot of things on fire?"

He rocked a hand. "Depends how you define a lot." At Riose's snort, he said, "Well. Yes, by the dictionary definition I do set a lot of stuff on fire. It comes with the turf."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm a firebug. Most witches have a bit of fire magic – the kind of stuff I did with your drink. But it's always been strong in my family and I got every last bit of it. You want someone to stroke crystals or heal wounds or do voodoo, I am so not your guy. But if you really want to see something burn, well, I can set your world on fire."

"And sometimes if you don't want to see something burn, Finn will still set your world on fire," murmured Riose. "Your game console, for example, if you beat him too often."

"I was _eight_!"

Sunny couldn't help the quiver of unease that ran through her. It was one thing to know Finn could manipulate fire. It was another to know that he couldn't always control it.

"Boys!" Jo came sprinting up, disarrayed. "We can't find Celia or Will. No one can."

"What?" There was steel in Riose's voice. "Are you certain?"

"They're not here." Phi joined them. "Arch said they were up in the loft." She took a breath, then said, "Maybe a prophecy would find-"

"No!" That came from Jo and Finn in fierce unison. "It's not worth your life," argued the witch. "And by the time you've done it – by the time you've looked through all the futures, it..." He trailed off.

"It would be too late, darling," finished Jo. She stared at Riose, her eyes narrowed. "Isn't that right, Ri?"

Riose regarded her for a very long moment. It was the face of a Fury, weighing the balance, calculating the cost. Sunny had seen it before. Then he murmured, "Exactly right."

Phi sighed. "If you're sure."

Sunny squinted past them. A figure was lurching from the barn, small and black on a sheet of gold. "Who's that?"

"Where?" Riose turned with a grace too liquid to be human. Then he was gone, the others in his wake.

Part of her – small, quailing before the flames – wanted to stay a safe distance away. But Celia was her friend, or the closest thing she'd ever had, and Sunny heard her saying fervently _No one hurts my friends._

It was a good mantra. She wanted to live up to it. But today of all days, she needed help.

And she knew where to find it. Among the gleams of human fear were other emotions – excitement, from a boy filming the entire thing on his phone. Determination, from the boy who tinkered with his flickering laptop. She centred herself, and reached for her power. Like a siren, she called their emotions to her. Just a little, just for now, hardly enough for them to notice.

And she was calmer. She could look at the fire and see something other than her own blackened past. Sunny followed the others, running on borrowed courage.

They reached the figure, who was doubled over, coughing.

"Will." Riose dragged him up, fist clenched in his shirt. "Where's Celia?"

Will stared at them from reddened eyes. "She's inside. I left her...the roof collapsed. She's still in there, you have to get her." He sagged onto the grass, wheezing.

Riose swore, bleak and low and savage. He drew their little knot away from Will. "I'm going in. Finn, can you clear me a path?"

The witch was watching the fire with the eyes of a man sizing up the enemy. "I've never held anything this big." A mirthless smile curved on his mouth. "Time to find out how good I am."

"Darling, you can't do it," hissed Jo, urgent. "There are people everywhere, and half of them don't know what we are."

"There's no time," snapped Riose. "Jo, look!"

"I know. I know!" The fingers she dug into his upper arms were clawed, but he didn't flinch and neither did she. The anguish in her eyes resonated in her voice. "Riose, please, people are already getting hurt because a couple of humans know. If you do this now, like this, they'll all know. _All _of them. Everything we have...you don't know what they can be like – you don't know what they'll do when they stop looking at you and seeing a person..."

"Don't ask me to leave her to die," he hissed.

Jo recoiled. "No! I wouldn't. Just – another way, Ri, please. So they don't see."

"I can do it." It was a moment before Sunny realised she had spoken. "I can get rid of everyone. Give me twenty seconds and I'll empty the place."

"How?"

"No time," she said. "You need to touch me, or you'll run too."

She didn't wait to see if they had listened – instead, she reached out for the fear that flitted on the air, and drew it in with demonic magnetism, the vacuum in her filling with all those bold, burning human emotions. She took them, trapped them, compressed them into a twitching lighting seed. And onto that, she added her own fear – the bone-deep, soul-deep fears of fire and abandonment which had been realised in terrible intensity for six long years in a demon world. She was not sure it was enough.

She opened her eyes. There were hands on her, clammy, tentative – the four of them, clustered around her like clover leaves.

"Help me," she breathed.

"Anything," said Finn, and Phi nodded. Almost anything, said Riose's wary eyes. Jo, quivering with revulsion, did not look at her at all.

"I need your fear."

"Go on," said Riose guardedly.

"Think of your worst fear," she commanded. "The one you know might just come true if all the stars collide in all the wrong ways. Think of it, and even if it's just for a moment, let it have you."

And she saw it rise from each of them, glimmering, flowing into her. Four people, and one thought, repeating in hesitant horror: _not Celia._

No, she vowed, and added their emotion to all she had gathered. Visible only to her, the sputtering globe of lightning sparked in her palm, tethered only by her will. She hefted it, hesitating only for a heartbeat. There could be no going back now, no hiding her strangeness. She hurled it high, and felt the night explode.

Fear blasted across the air like a supernova, briefly blinding her. Screams came in its wake, torn from unsuspecting throats. Sunny blinked away purple afterimages to see people running. Not knowing why or where or how, they scattered. Even Will fled, scrambling away in uneven, ragged steps. In moments, only the five of them remained.

"What _are _you?" breathed Jo, cringing back.

Her chin came up. "Exactly what you asked for. Another way."

"Good work," said Finn. He squeezed her hand before stepping away. "My turn. Jo, why don't you get my mom? Celia's going to need healing. Smoke and lungs are not a good mix."

"Sure thing, darling," muttered the wildcat, vanishing into the night.

"Riose, as soon as I tell you, run," ordered the witch. "I'll hold the way open as long as I can, but..."

"Understood."

Finn took a deep breath, set himself like a man bracing for impact, then raised his hands. The air around him shimmered, and Sunny felt pressure bear down upon her, as if she was stood under a monster storm, waiting for it to burst. His fingers hooked, one hand over the other like a man trying to pry open elevator doors – and then he heaved.

The air groaned. Every inch of the witch was locked in a battle with unseen forces, from his white knuckles to his strained shoulders. He gasped, and his fingers slid an inch apart.

And the flames parted like someone cracking open their curtains. It was nothing more than a wavering black line in the inferno, quickly hidden by gouts of smoke, but hope skewered Sunny at the sight of it.

Riose leaned forward, a sprinter waiting on the gun.

Finn snarled soft words, curses or spells, and with another effort, dragged open the space again, again, again. Now it was a narrow, perilous pathway. "Go!"

Riose bolted, so fast he blurred; only a faint breath of his aftershave remained.

"Phi..." Finn's voice was strangled. "Can you go get Cee's mom, and Ri's?"

"He won't like that," warned Phi.

"Why do you think I waited until he'd gone?" He took a shuddering breath. "Please."

"Damn." She sighed. "You had to ask nicely. I'll get them. Finn – no heroics. Be smart."

"No heroics," said he, holding back an inferno. "Pinky swear."

With a shake of her head, Phi slipped into the shadows, feet soft thunder on the ground.

Sunny said, "You sent them away. Why?"

Silence unwound. Then Finn croaked, "All part of my dastardly plan. You and me alone at last. Feeling faint with lust yet?"

"Positively dizzy," she muttered, and looked at him again, with demon eyes.

Head bowed, breath sawing, Finn struggled against the fire. He was a black statue, and emotions pulsed around him with every breath. With all that was in him, he flung himself against this vast adversary, courage, anger, sheer will driving his magic.

And pain. It was hurting him, his power dripping away like sand in an hourglass.

Hurry, Riose, she thought. He can't hold on forever. Hurry with my blessing, if the blessing of a demon means anything when all hell has broken loose.

-o0o-

Celia tried to be sensible. She tried not to panic. It was not going well.

The barrier was impassable both ways. Eventually smoke drove her back, coughing. She stumbled between the flames, the pain in her feet getting worse and worse as the floor heated. Celia knew she could not go on much longer. Glancing back, she saw bloody footprints on the wood.

When an edge hit her thighs, she recognised the drinks table. And – small blessings – several large bottles of water still on it, if warm. She emptied them over herself and yanked off the tablecloth to put between her and the floor. It was shelter. She would rest for a minute, just a minute until her feet hurt less.

Huddled beneath it, a minute became longer. The table protected her from pieces of the falling roof that crashed down. It was getting harder to breathe, even down on the floor. Worse, she didn't think she could stand again.

And then she heard something. An impossible something.

Her name.

It had to be her imagination. Terrible fluttering hope rose in her, wringing out hot tears.

"Celia!" A shout above the roaring flames, defiant and so familiar.

"Here!" she cried, throat burning before coughs tore her words away. She fought them back. "_Riose!"_

-o0o-

Finn had been trembling since the start, but the tremors had become full-on shakes. Worse, Sunny could see the emotions around him receding. That was bad. Very bad.

"Finn, you have to stop," she said.

"Over my-" His hands skidded – for a moment, the fire surged partway over the path, but with a feral howl, he pulled it back. The effort drove him to his knees, teeth bared. He took a rasping breath and finished, "-dead body."

"It will be if you carry on," she pointed out. "You're on the floor. If you don't let go of the fire now, you never will."

"I'll be fine. Looks worse than it is." He managed to meet her gaze, his eyes dark and vast with pain. "Can't expect an outsider to understand."

The barb took away her breath like a punch to the gut. Then Sunny steadied, recognising it for what it was. "Nice try. Don't think that being cruel to me means I'm going to let you martyr yourself. Newsflash, firebug – you're not the only one with unusual talents. I can read your emotions like a book, and you're at the cliffhanger - out of power, and draining your life force. Fast."

He gave a rickety laugh. "Damn it. I should have sent you on an errand too."

"Why, so I wouldn't try and stop you?" The answer was stark in his expression. "Well, I won't." She closed her eyes: considered, but it was barely a decision at all. "Not until the last moment."

"Thank..." He gasped, head back as if he'd received a blow, then brought the flames back under control. The way back quivered before them. "Thank you."

-o0o-

Celia scrambled out from under the table, on hands and knees, panicked. What if he hadn't heard?

Stand, it's only pain, she told herself, and put her weight onto her leg.

Red lights exploded on her vision, and she hung there, wheezing. Then hands closed about her, firm and strong. She looked up into his eyes, which were hot as the fire. "You came for me," she said, and drew in a difficult breath. "You _idiot_."

"Of course I came. Someone had to break Finn's monopoly on stupid stunts." He looked down at her feet. "And if I'm the idiot, why don't you have any shoes on?"

"Oh, we're idiots together," she croaked, looping an arm around his shoulders as he pulled her up. Celia couldn't stifle her moan as her feet touched the floor. "Ri..."

He swung her up into his arms. "Don't argue. Your feet are mincemeat and we need to get out fast. Finn's holding a way out."

"He can do that?" she mumbled.

"Looks like." She buried her face against his neck as heat hit her. "Hang on. With a bit of luck-"

-o0o-

Sunny felt it coming – Finn was on his knees, eyes barely open. The last few glimmers of his strength were dimming.

"Let go!" she ordered.

If he heard, he didn't respond. A spark winked and out, and she knew there was no choice. He would hate her for it: she would hate herself too, but she would not watch Finn die like this.

With one quick tap, she broke his concentration. He grabbed for the power with a howl, but it was already gone. The fire roared and twisted upwards like hands punching the air in victory. The path was devoured in an instant.

Finn collapsed to the floor, heads in his hands. "You…"

She knelt beside him. "Me."

He struggled up, every motion slumped with exhaustion. Nothing but righteous anger propelled him. "You've killed them."

"Maybe. Ten seconds and I'd have killed you. I'm not going to watch you die needlessly." I have seen enough of that in the hollow place, she added silently. I have left so many to die because I couldn't even save myself. "I'm sorry."

"Not..." He toppled, limbs unable to hold him. "Not good enough. Never good enough."

"I know," she whispered, because it was true.

-o0o-

The world ruptured; a noise like a jet engine snarled around them. Riose staggered in a backdraft, and she gripped his arms. His heart was hammering in her ears, and more than anything, that made it real.

"Way out's gone," he said briefly. "Cee, I'm going to get us out but it's going to hurt."

"More than being burned alive?" she said in his ear.

"Good point. Hopefully less." He walked back from the wall, then turned. "We're going through that."

"...through?"

"Hold tight. I'm going to hit it with my back." He hefted her effortlessly, and Celia realised he was trying to hold her to protect her body. "I'll do what I can but your legs might get scratched."

"At least they'll match my feet," she said, trying to keep the fear from her voice. "What about your back? I mean...the wall's wood. And it's on fire. That's like vampire kryptonite."

"Yeah, but think how incredibly cool it's going to look when I explode out of a burning building carrying the damsel in distress. They'll have to gold plate my man card."

She laughed, almost, but it sounded like a sob. Then he was tensing, and when he burst into motion, despite herself, she screamed into his shoulder, the fear rushing up her like the flames. She could not look, but felt the lurch as he turned at the last second to hit the wall.

It felt like every bone in her body crunched under the impact; wood screamed and splintered, and pain splintered in her knees and legs with it, and the world was nothing but heat and noise and the knowledge that this was how it ended-

And then they were out in air which felt as cold as ice, gnawing at every inch of her exposed skin. They were out and she was alive, and she looked up with amazed eyes to see his smoke-smeared face. It was all right. Somehow, it was all right.

Then she glimpsed, flaring from his shoulders like the golden ghost of wings, fire.

"Riose, roll!" she bawled through a raw throat.

And he obeyed – they hit the ground hard in a tangle of limbs as around her the world pinwheeled, ground and sky and ground and sky. The breath was pummelled from her by the uncaring dirt, and she lost track of everything.

When her senses crawled back, she was on her side. Orange light played on the ground in strange shapes – she reached for it with a hand as weak as if she'd aged eighty years. From the knees up, she was all bruises. From the knees down, there was pain in myriad forms; sharp, dull, itchy, inflamed. She made the executive decision not to look.

They had broken through the back of the barn, out into empty land ringed by the forest. What remained of the building was burning ferociously. Every so often, as another part collapsed, crashes punctuated the crackle of the fire. Bits of broken wood were scattered around them, smoking.

She looked for Riose and found him just behind her. He was flat on his stomach and still. Incredibly still. A terrible lurch went through her – with panicked hands, she dragged herself closer. His back was a marbled mess. What remained of his shirt was scraps that framed the bloodied and raw burns.

"Ri?" Half his face was pressed to the ground; she brushed the hair from his eyes. "Riose? I'm sorry. This is my fault."

He groaned. One eye opened slowly. "Is it? Don't tell me you torched the barn. Was Will that bad?"

Relief swept her. "You're okay. I thought..."

"I'm definitely alive. No one dead hurts this much. And none of this is your fault. That was not a normal fire." He braced himself on his elbows, and hissed in pain. "Your face says it's bad," he mumbled groggily. "Are backless dresses going to be a no-go?"

She swallowed. "Good news: this was officially my favourite stupid stunt of the evening. Bad news: you left quite a bit of your skin on that wall and we aren't going back to get it. Good news: we survived."

There was a pause, then he said, "Did you just try to shit sandwich my second degree burns?"

"Yes. Did it help?"

"Still hurts like hell. I'm not moving again unless it's an emergency. What about you?"

"It's not feeling too good," she admitted. "I haven't looked."

He turned his head briefly. "I've seen worse."

"Ri, I know your past. That's not comforting."

His smile looked like an effort, but genuine. "I've seen...much worse?"

"I'll take it." She reached for his hand, and the feeling of him there, warm and real, steadied her. "Wait, what did you mean it wasn't a normal fire?"

"Sunny and I were outside when it started. The barn went up like it was soaked in gasoline. Someone set that fire."

"…why?" she breathed, horrified.

"Your guess is as good as-"

A whistling noise drowned out his words. He paused, and her own puzzlement was reflected in his eyes.

Above them, fizzling white looped and exploded into glittering stars. And then another: a screaming rocker that blew overhead.

Finn's fireworks. Someone had breached the ward.

She looked up, towards the trees. For a moment, she saw nothing, and hoped it was a mishap. Then they emerged – a jangling chain of dark figures. The firelight revealed Halloween masks and worse, weapons. Baseball bats. A wrench. And – oh yes, of course – a hockey stick.

"Riose?" she whispered. "I think that emergency's here."

-o0o-

"Did you have fireworks planned?" Sunny asked, squinting through the smoke at the coloured sparks.

"Huh?" Finn was flat on his back, a hand over his forehead. He hadn't said a word to her. His anger hung on the air, a wispy smoke that was a poor imitation of the real deal. "That's not funny."

"I'm not being funny. I think a rocket just went off." Red blossomed on the air like a chrysanthemum. "There's another."

His fingers clenched against the ground. "Not now. I can't raise a damn spark."

"What is it?"

"Early warning system." He took a deep breath. "The fireworks go off when gatecrashers trip my spell."

She was on her feet, itching to do something. "I'll see who it is."

"I already know. It's your bosom buddies, Mike and Kirsty." His bitterness twisted on the air.

She gazed down at him. "They're not my friends. They're people I had lunch with. And one of them beat up Celia. You think I want to hang around with them now?"

"You didn't seem that fond of Celia when you left her to burn," he pointed out flatly.

She had to stamp down hard on her anger. Save it for training, she told herself. When you can beat the air and pretend it's his head. "You're angry, I get it. But let's not write them off yet. In fact..." She glared at him. "Ever spoken mind to mind with Riose?"

His eyes opened. "Yes."

"Good. Let me have that memory, and I'll see if I can contact him."

Animation stirred in his face. "Here."

She reached into his mind, careful: he was fragile as lace, wrung out by his battle. She lifted the memory with light hands, and there was the presence that was Riose: blue-green, strong, vigilant. She could recognise him anywhere.

Sunny cast out her thoughts in an ever-widening spiral. It was moments before she picked him up. Relief flooded her.

_Riose?_

There was a startled pause. _Who's this?_

_Sunny. Are you both – did you get out?_

_Yes. Just. We've got bigger problems. _She felt his grim determination. _Six of them, armed, and neither of us in any shape to fight._

She smiled, anticipation singing through her veins. _Then aren't you lucky I'm here?_

She tossed Finn an ironic salute. "They're alive. Mind if I go kick some ass?"

He stared at her as if seeing someone new. "No. Don't kill them," he said, and she wouldn't wonder until later what he'd seen in her face that made him add that.

Worse yet, she supposed her answer didn't provide him much comfort.

"I'll try."

-o0o-

Celia thrust herself up to a kneeling position. It wasn't fun, but without the balls of her feet touching anything, she could manage. "Huh. Masks. Black. Weapons. Either you're very confused mimes, or there's a point to this visit."

"Oh, there's a point," said one of them. It was no human voice, bass and tinny due to what she guessed was one of those stupid voice changers. "Or a blunt instrument."

Beside her, Riose got to his feet with a sinuousness that had to have cost him. "Which is?"

"The reckoning's come," said another, the one swinging the hockey stick. "You think you own us. You think we're your toys. You think because you look human we can't see the monster underneath."

"That's a lot of assumptions about how I think," said Riose very softly. "And only one of them true."

His smile gleamed like the edge of a knife.

"I'll let you work out which one," he said.

"Subhuman," spat another.

"Monsters don't run into burning buildings to save their friends," she pointed out. Celia made sure she looked at each of them, made them see her as she was: injured, weakened, tired.

"You think that thing went in because you're his _friend_?" said the one with the wrench, gesturing at Riose. "He went in to save his precious vamp tramp. You're nothing but a cheap meal and a cheap f-"

Riose hit him, silent and so quick that Celia only saw the aftermath: a body thudded onto the ground and the wrench followed, slammed deep into the ground beside his head.

Then they were upon him; a mosaic of struggling bodies and flickering firelight. Weapons rose and fell, and she fought to keep track of where Riose was in the pandemonium. At first, she thought he would manage it. The Furies had trained him, after all, trained him in the arts of violence, to be elegant and deadly and pitiless.

Burt then she saw the first blow land on his back, and it knocked him to the floor. He was quick to get up, but slow to block the hockey stick that cracked against his arms. Celia had seen him fight before, and this time was different. Riose was fast, but no faster than a human, and they outnumbered him badly. Blood slicked his back, where they took care to hit him, and there were too many weapons he could not dodge.

"Why don't you pick on someone your own species?" she screamed, desperate, and one of them broke away. The one holding the hockey stick. Oh, good.

"Like you, vamp tramp?" mocked the distorted voice. "You're a traitor."

"I'm not the one burning down buildings for kicks," she spat back. "You could have killed everyone. What the hell is wrong with you?"

The figure lifted the hockey stick. "They're what's wrong. They're everywhere, parasites, and you – don't – see – it. We're clearing them out, and all their brainless pawns with them!"

She swung. Celia ducked, waiting for the blow.

It never came.

"Poor word choice," said a new voice, silky and purring. Celia looked up: it was Sunny there, holding back the hockey stick with nothing more than a fingertip while the figure strained against her. She looked small, and entirely unafraid. Her feline smile left her eyes empty.

The dreamy blue dress floated about her as she moved: step, step twist and _kick_, and suddenly the black body was in flight, arms akimbo. It hit the ground with a gargle, the hockey stick bouncing from its hand.

"You see," murmured Sunny, strolling forward, "With the right moves, a pawn can always become a queen."

And then, in a swirl of glistening blue, she sprang into the fight. She was like nothing Celia had ever seen; there was no furious litany of motion, only a few considered decisions. Her hands here, bending back an elbow until something popped. The surgical precision of a leg sweep that dropped a neck into her waiting elbow. A mocking little curtsy that caused a bat to whistle over her head and its owner to find her foot had made his knee hinge in ways nature had not intended.

There was a moment of near-crisis when one of them knocked her off-balance with the wild lunge of a crowbar, but Riose threw himself against her attacker before they could take advantage. Sunny gracefully ploughed a knee into their mask, which crumpled with a plastic squeal.

It was their last resistance.

They ran, or hobbled, away. Sunny stepped after them as if she'd hunt them down, and Riose said coolly, "Don't bother. We know who they are."

"We'll serve it cold?" said the demon, and she and Riose looked at one another with a perfect comprehension that Celia didn't share.

"It's for the best," he said. "Celia, are you-"

"I didn't just get repeatedly beaten with blunt instruments," she interrupted. "Are _you_ all right?"

He had the look of a man about to lie through his teeth. "It stung a bit."

Voices reached them. Sunny turned, eyes turned to liquid gold from the firelight reflected there. "I think help's coming."

"Celia gets seen first," said Riose, sinking down to one knee as if he'd planned it. "I'm fine..."

With one last gasp, the barn collapsed.

"At least the fire's over," offered Sunny once the smoke had rushed over them.

"It's not what's over I'm worried about," Riose said. He looked at Celia, eyes too-bright, hardly human at all. The yellow graffiti in the alley. _There will be a reckoning_.

And it had come.

_These are the things, the things we lost_  
_The things we lost in the fire, fire, fire_  
_Do you understand that we will never be the same again?_  
_The future's in our hands and we will never be the same again_

-o0o-


End file.
